There is a vast difference between having knowledge and living from that knowledge. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of the most wise and knowledgeable men of the 19th century, lamented the “double-consciousness” of his idealism which allowed him to see universal truths without giving him the daily means to live those truths. “I wish to exchange this flash-of-lightning faith for continuous daylight, this fever-glow for a benign climate.”  He wished, he continued, to reconcile his “two lives,” the one of his ego, the other of his soul.

For thousands of years, countless monks, mystics and teachers have been telling us the way to heal the painful breach between ego and soul, illusion and reality, is through meditation or other contemplative practice.  More recently, advances in brain imaging technology and developmental psychology has provided solid evidence of meditation’s ability to “rewire” the brain and how we “see.”  Religion and science are telling us the same thing:  With consistent stillness, we create a space of freedom from the tyranny of ego-thoughts that allows us to finally recognize the quiet soul.  

In the New Age, the vital first step for all efforts at transformation, whether of self or society, is to develop a regular contemplative practice. If we ignore this step, then all our good intentions simply bog down in the perennial struggle of being human -- or being “meat,” as Wilber bluntly puts it.  Indeed, as Wilber goes on to say, the main reason that Western idealism has not yet lived up to its promise to transform societies is because, in the past, it failed to “develop any truly contemplative practices… to reproduce in consciousness the transpersonal insights and intuition of its founders.”

According to idealism‘s founders, the purpose of life is the evolution toward greater consciousness.  Our entire purpose in being alive is to grow our minds, and become more aware of reality, more aware of spirit.  For eons, consciousness evolved on its own, on its own unhurried time frame.  But the more we have come to understand how consciousness unfolds, the more we have been able to help along our own growth, and the faster we humans have advanced through the different stages of spiritual development.   

Choose the contemplative method that best suits you, and commit to doing it, even if only a few minutes a day.  Let others know you practice, how it impacts you.  Help build a culture that makes room for reflection, and that is grounded in the wisdom of stillness.

The Tree of practice

One of my favorite resources on the Web is The Center for contemplative Mind in Society (www.contemplativemind.org).  Their site provides a helpful chart, “The Tree of Practices,” which divides contemplative practice into the following categories:

Stillness:  Most sitting meditation or any contemplative silence and breathing

Movement:  Walking meditation, Qigong, T’ai Chi, yoga, labyrinth walking

Prayer or “Generative” practice:  Mantra, the Lord’s Prayer, rosaries, lovingkindness mediation

Creation Process:  chanting, singing, journaling, art

Ritual:  Sabbath rituals, vision quests, sweat lodges, ceremonies, altar-building

Activist:  volunteering, pilgrimages, vigils/marches

You can find great support in developing a spiritual practice by joining a progressive church, such as Unitarian Universalist, or a contemplative group that forms around a Buddhist Temple or Zen Center.  But you can certainly learn a lot on your own from the Internet or one of many hundreds of books on meditating.

Finding Peace with Lack of Time

Sitting meditation is probably the most direct and effective practice for spiritual growth, but not everyone is temperamentally suited to it. Or, if you’re like me, with a full-time job, plus volunteer work, three kids, a husband, a house, cats and a dog -- well, its usually impossible to get two minutes to myself, and even those minutes are not going to be quiet.  So I am able to formally sit only sporadically.

In the meantime, I grab every opportunity I can for meditating while moving.  I walk my dog every day, and try to keep my focus on each step.  I often do qigong movements in the morning and some yoga stretches at night, and try to keep my focus on my breath.  I remind myself at different points in the day -- while in the shower, or doing dishes, or sitting at a red light, or standing in line at the store -- to stay mindful and present with what I am doing.  And whenever possible, I read spiritual and philosophical books to expand my awareness.

It is the best I can do, and while I have experienced many wonderful and calming benefits from my patched-together method, I admit it is not the regular and committed practice I long for.  I sometimes feel cheated by circumstances, and I despair that I will never be able to achieve true inner understanding of reality.

Yet, thanks to my study, I also know that the most effective way to clear my vision is to accept my life as it is today in all its crowded, noisy, too-much to do splendor.  We must remember, said Chogyam Trungpa,  that one state is no better than the other. 

“Chaotic situations must not be rejected,” he wrote.  “Nor must we regard them as regressive, as a return to confusion.  We must respect whatever happens to our state of mind…. Any state of mind must be regarded as a workable situation.”  We are each already where we are supposed to be.

Spiritual growth is the result of practice, but that practice does not necessarily have to be the practice of formal sitting meditation.  "There are no specific means or practices that can bring one closer to reality, says Alan Watts,” for every such device is artfulness… There is no way to where we are, and whoever seeks one finds only a slick wall of granite without passage or foothold.  Yogas, prayers, therapies and spiritual exercises are at root only elaborate postponements of the recognition that there is nothing to be grasped and no way to grasp it.”

When all is said and done, the most important form of spiritual practice is daily living.  And while meditation practice is undeniably the most effective way to dial down the noisy ego long enough to “hear” the truth within us, it does not follow that we can’t hear any truth without it.  Intuition of truth has a way of slipping through the cracks in even the thickest wall of thought.  And a shift in perspective is all it takes to open a crack.  Meanwhile, a consistent daily effort to be mindful and present in your daily life will help those cracks to widen.

In the end, whether you are able to formally meditate or choose some other contemplative practice or ritual, there is one way to measure whether you are succeeding in true self-realization:  When your practice moves you beyond yourself to take action in the greater world.

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