The Necessity of Spiritual Practice
Some years ago, at a meditation retreat, the teacher was asked whether it was necessary for a person to have a spiritual teacher. I found the reply insightful. The teacher said that in theory no, but in practice yes.
It is the same with spiritual practice. In theory, it is not needed. In practice it is.
The body mind mechanism is a highly complex and capable instrument. It is incredibly sensitive and responsive. Being so responsive, it is also constantly influenced by the surroundings it is in. It is much more fluid and interactive with the surroundings than the underlying socialized self picture indicates.
The nervous system functions like the toy I saw as a child. A square of moving pins and when you pushed your hand up into the pins, you see the shape of your hand on the pins. The nervous system does the same thing though in a more complex and sophisticated way. It ‘imprints’ on its surroundings.
Living in the modern society one is inundated with constant media and surrounded by manufactured environments. The physical surroundings and the constant media exposure shapes the brain and nervous system.
The human created physical and media environment is out of sync with the life force. It is abstracted and purposefully aloof from nature and the rhythms and patterns of the life force.
Our intrinsic nature is one with the life force. At a fundamental level within, we can say we are the life force. But because we live in an abstracted environment that is aloof from and out of sync with the life force, there is a split within the person. The brain/nervous system ends up in a vibratory state which is out of rhythm with our own life energy.
The spiritual objective is to unify that split and create a balanced and integrated whole being. Spiritual practice is the work, using a right understanding and a varied set of tools, to fulfill that objective.
As such, spirituality is not about belief, moral codes or intellectual knowledge. It is an empirical work of getting from point A to point B — from a fractured and discordant energy field (Point A) to a harmonious and integral energy field (Point B).
What is needed to move from point A to point B?
The modern society is very much out of balance. Growing up and living in the society, the interactive nature of the human nervous system means we absorb that imbalance by osmosis. Our nervous system imprints on its surroundings (the society) and then those imprints reside in the physiology. Those out of balance imprints manifest as tension, stagnation, pain and limitation in the physical structure.
These in turn, shape and limit what the consciousness can perceive. The ability of the individual consciousness to perceive clearly, depends on the health of the body/mind mechanism. In this use, the word health means to be free (in large part at least) of those stagnant imprints. The body/mind mechanism is the tool we have to cultivate our inner objective.
While that theoretical capacity is there, right from the young age the body/mind mechanism is burdened with a lot of stagnant patterns which blunt the capability. If you want to take a clear photograph with a camera and the lens has a lot of dust inside and the focus ring is stuck, you will first have to clean and repair the lens before you can get a good result with the camera.
It is the same with the body/mind mechanism. We have to make this physio-energetic structure an instrument capable of fulfilling this task.
So who does this matter for?
It matters for people on a spiritual path. It also matters to those who work towards a healthier saner society.
A lot of people today are seeing the need for significant social change. With a destabilizing climate, environmental degradation, growing inequality and social fragmentation all becoming more obvious, more people are feeling the pressure to shift the social structure. For those who see this, the question arises for them, how to do that?
There are lots of matters to discuss on what external changes to make in the society. This article is focused on what needs to happen internally for such changes to be able to manifest.
When the body/mind is full of stagnated imprints, it is limited by those imprints. The mind is not able to ‘see’ outside of them. Clear the body of the various stagnations, emotional pains and so on, and the mind will have different thoughts and perceptions. If the body is full of the stagnated patterns of society, the person may have an idea of change, but the energetic reality of that change will have a vibratory pattern unfamiliar to them through the imprints they have become acclimated to. What that means is, they will not be able to see the actuality of the new way, just the abstracted concept of it.
The result is, a person may have a mental concept of what they would like the society to move towards, but energetically, they can still be manifesting the patterns of the status quo. This is a core reason why so many groups and organizations either self destruct, or if ‘successful’, end up recreating the problems they started out to change.
For inner work it is the same thing. One can adopt concepts of universal love and aspire to elevated consciousness, but those can remain concepts and the consciousness unable to see the actuality which the concept is merely a representation of. The actuality can remain something vibrationally foreign and invisible even while the intellect is aspiring to the concept.
Whether one is focused internally or externally, to bring about something new, one has to free oneself (and working in groups, collectively) from the shapes of the old. This requires work on the body/mind mechanism to make it an instrument capable of the task.
There are many teachings and techniques for doing this work. What will work for any given individual will vary. That is a whole other subject. The point here is that such work, whatever the technique, is necessary to become the person capable of seeing beyond the concept to the vibrational reality of the new.
