What does it mean to live a spiritual life?
Our culture values progress and achievement. Given this, we seek ‘markers’ that help us know how well we are doing. Thus, when we seek to respond to the question we are holding – What does it mean to live a spiritual life? – we can quite easily become seduced by the following questions: ‘How far have I advanced?’ ‘In what ways have I matured since I started along this spiritual path?’ ‘What step of the spiritual ladder am I on and what will it take for me to get to the next step?’ In certain contexts, questions such as these can be helpful; yet I invite you, Gentle Reader, to consider that it might be important for us to leave these questions aside as we think about and engage the initial question. One of my past reflections might help serve as an example.
[From a 2013 Journal Entry] ‘When I think about where I am when it comes to my spiritual life I come up with as many reasons for pessimism as for optimism. For more than 40 years now I still have many of the same searching struggles: I am still searching for inner peace, for creative relationships with others, for the ability to ‘let go’ the image of relationships that are dramatically changing, and I am still searching for God especially during the times I am wandering in the deep woods, the deserts, the wilderness and the wasteland. Am I really living more of a ‘spiritual life’ than I was living five or ten years ago?’
What I have learned about myself is that I frequently find myself living within three polarities (are they paradoxes?); there is a tension that comes with living here. I don’t think I am alone when it comes to these polarities, nor to the accompanying tensions; it seems to me that many of us who seek to engage the question – What does it mean to live a spiritual life? – hold these, or similar, polarities.
The first polarity is a personal one; it focuses on the first relationship I have – the relationship I have with myself. For me, it is the polarity between ‘loneliness’ and ‘solitude.’ The second polarity focuses on the relationship I have with the other(s). For me, it is the polarity between ‘hostility’ and ‘hospitality.’ The third polarity focuses on the relationship I have, or seek to have, with God. For me it is the polarity between despair and hope [despair is rooted in illusion and disillusion and hope is rooted in prayer and service].
For me, my spiritual life is a constant movement between these polarities. The more I embrace both as part of who I am [this is where the idea of ‘paradox’ comes in – this is not an ‘either/or’ proposition; it is a ‘both/and’ proposition] the more I am able to live a life that is not divided (again, ‘either/or’) but that is truly a life of wholeness (again, ‘both/and’). Living a spiritual life is living a life of wholeness. It means accepting that I am, at my healthiest, a living paradox – I am good and evil, I am light and darkness, I am virtue and vice, I am despair and hope, I am, in other words, fully human.
I am remembering the monk who was approached by the student. The student asked what it was like to live a spiritual life. The monk replied that ‘before I lived a spiritual life I was depressed.’ Now that I am able to more fully live a spiritual life I am depressed.’ I hold onto this little story for it provides me hope, makes me laugh and allows me to affirm that I am, indeed, fully human.