Walking the Spiritual
Path
This is where it begins:
The really satisfying, and really challenging, task of making the concepts
something real and useful in your life. To gain your soul and spirit, you will
have to bring lofty spiritual ideas and inspiration down into the world of your
ordinary experience.
Gaining an understanding
of the reality of spiritual life and its relevance to our day-to-day concerns is
a vital and necessary first step. But the second, more consuming and embracing
step is to bring this wisdom into the world through action. Words, and even
noble emotion, will not suffice. It is in the labour of the body--its engagement
with the world--that spiritual life will gradually find a way to blossom and
vitalise us and all around.
Now this task truly is
monumental, and as for most other significant undertakings, needs to be
approached in a pragmatic way. So, much of ordinary commonsense can be applied
to the process of inner unfoldment. These pages on practical spirituality
will offer you a broad coverage of what needs to be done in general--from
lifestyle to nutrition to friends. And at the same time they will deeply focus
on the single most important key to success. That key, is, freeing the mind from
unconscious blocks and distortions.
To begin with, consider
the following metaphor which provides a useful image that can help place these
tasks in perspective. In this image, the wind, or breeze, stands for the
useful and good habits that we need to garden and cultivate. For instance,
finding regular time for meditation and living a reasonably balanced lifestyle
with not too many "wicked" vices. And in the image, unconscious blocks are
characterised by anchors--heavy weights that slow, or halt, progress.
Picture a sailboat just
off the coast of an island. It is just outside dangerous reefs and aiming to
sail out to sea toward other lands. However, the skipper has a little problem.
Although she's got a strong steady following breeze that should be scooting her
craft along out and away from the reefs, her boat is barely inching forward. And
more alarmingly, the tide has turned and is starting to take the boat back
toward the reef! What's wrong?
Well, on closer inspection the skipper finds that,
unbeknownst to her, the anchors have all been dropped. No wonder the boat is
going nowhere.
Now in this image, the
nearby island represents this life that we live in while the boat and skipper
are our body and heart mind. The coral reefs stand for the difficulties that are
inherent in this level of existence and the changing tide bodes the passage of
time--with old age, death and disease akin to being dragged back to the reefs.
In the context of all this, the boat's following breeze is much like spiritual
practice. Meditation, yoga, service, energy work and right living are all good
and proper means to build up a head of psychic and psychological breeze towards
spirit--the BREEZE. But, the anchors! Well, you probably have the idea by now,
the anchors represent our unconscious mind and all the psychological gunk that
gets in the way of our smooth sailing. And that gunk applies to smooth sailing
toward the regular needs and desires of this life as well as the goal and wish
for spiritual development.
In the metaphysical Kahuna
system of the ancient Hawaiians, it was taught that human consciousness
consisted of three parts--conscious, unconscious and superconscious. And most
importantly, those wise sages said that the unconscious is the gatekeeper to,
and guardian of, the superconscious. That is, to reach spirit, we necessarily
have to plough through the forest of the unconscious.
So, back to the sailboat.
The skipper being a wise lady, has her crew pull in the anchors, and, hoorah,
the boat, thanks to its strong following trade wind, easily and smoothly glides
forth out from the reefs and into the ocean on its way. The boat and crew are in
harmony with their island home, the weather, the islands they may visit and the
spirit of the sea.
This simple picture is
really very powerful. It turns out that this metaphor appears to be the best
model for how to actually progress spiritually. That is, although one can simply
work at spiritual practices, the anchors of past conditioning ( early age,
birth, pre-birth and even past life [if you believe in that] ) will inevitably
distort the purest intents. A more reliable way forward is to include personal
psychotherapy along with spiritual practice.
Classically all major
spiritual disciplines tried to address this need to meet and align with the
unconscious mind. For instance, in the raja yoga tradition, the first two steps
of an eight-step formula to achieve spiritual realisation, consist of personal
and social ethics. However, a major contribution of western civilisation to the
great spiritual and metaphysical traditions is its insight into the unconscious
mind. And more importantly, its understanding of how to support and evolve this
level of mind through psychotherapy.
So, although the
traditional approaches have much in their favour, it now appears that a more
certain, powerful and direct way to work with this unconscious aspect of
spiritual practice is through psychotherapy. From, many decades of experience,
it is well established that years of solid effort are needed before a person can
truly and adequately re-experience and develop her or his unconscious processes.
Even the very best therapy can take five or more years of steady, methodical
work to achieve useful results.
Thus, working with both
traditional spiritual practices, such as meditation, and psychotherapy
in parallel seems to be the best and steadiest way to proceed along the
spiritual path. There are several contemporary traditions that generally embrace
this understanding. For instance, the works of A. H. Almaas and much of current
transpersonal psychology.
