The art of spiritual living is like a balanced diet that needs a little of everything

By Edward Viljoen

The art of spiritual living, like a balanced diet, requires more than one form of nutrition and benefits from a balanced approach. For example, selfless service to others (the practice of actively expressing loving-kindness), charitable contribution (the practice of sharing material wealth), expressing gratitude (the practice of acknowledging and appreciating), prayer (the practice of daily devotionals)—all in addition to meditation—are what I’ve found to be some of the basic minimum requirements of a spiritual life.

Of the components mentioned above, the first four are active. They consist of activities that can easily engage you and your mind. For this reason, they seem to have a stronger appeal and are more quickly adopted as spiritual practices among those beginning to explore what it means to lead a spiritual life. When people who are new to a spiritual way of life find themselves to be distressed by life’s unexpected turns or when their minds are troubled with worry, they gravitate to something they can do, active remedies, perhaps because doing so contributes to their feeling confident that they are doing something useful for themselves and others.

In the beginning, they may have more difficulty establishing a meditation practice than they do learning to pray or committing to do some service in their community—possibly because their minds are busy, troubled, or worried and they don’t yet know what to do with that. So sitting still may turn into a session of thinking about what is currently troubling them.

The problem with a spiritual life strategy that omits meditation is that it can unintentionally be all action-oriented and self-directed. Now that may not be such a bad thing if you understand your “self” well and you have thoroughly investigated your mind and its workings, and you are familiar with the hidden beliefs that sometimes inform your decisions. It is my experience that no one has fully and adequately explored that realm of self-awareness, enough to say they no longer have to pay attention to it.

A spiritual life directed by intellect only is missing out on a richness of wisdom and peace that has always been inside us, possibly hidden below the surface activity of thought and ideas of who we are. Although a student will see terrific progress with whatever beginnings they make in learning to live a more spiritual life, with whatever spiritual tool they learn to use, and although they will see results in their own lives and in the lives of those around them rather quickly, without meditation it is possible that they will not have accessed a larger part of their being where intuitive wisdom, expansive thought, and enduring love can be drawn upon to lead them. They will likely reach a plateau, or bottom out, or lose interest in the spiritual way of living that they embarked on because something will seem to be missing.

Service, study, contribution, acknowledgement and prayer combined with meditation stir up a symbiotic balance of compassion, devotion, wisdom, gratitude and intuition.

SERVICE to others is the act of purposefully putting the needs of others in first priority in terms of your time, attention, and resources. It means scheduling, on a regular basis, time to do something that contributes to the well- being, ease, and/or success of another, whether that is through an organization or on a one- on-one basis. Service connects us to other people and helps us see and draw near to those who are suffering so that we may through our contribution of time or talent contribute to the relief of their suffering so that they may be encouraged to pursue their own freedom.

STUDY, specifically spiritual study, is the practice of purposefully placing yourself in a learning environment in which you are exposed to ideas that did not originate in your own mind. It means actively seeking out elevating teachings and taking time to broaden your own base of understanding with thoughts that come from disciplines and cultures other than those you are already familiar with. Study develops wisdom and dissolves narrowness of thought. It grows tolerance for ambiguity and paradox, and contributes to a willingness to inquire and understand.

CONTRIBUTION is the act of establishing a regular practice of giving to either an organization or individuals that do work that you support. It means developing generosity of spirit and sharing a portion of what supply you have. In this regard, it is the companion practice to service. Whereas service contributes your gift of time, the practice of material contribution is about sharing your wealth. Each is an important component of spiritual life, and in my opinion, one does not substitute for the other.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT is the act of purposefully appreciating people, events, things, and creatures in your life. It means practicing to notice what is in your life and who is in your life, and articulating, either to them or to yourself, what you value about them and how they contribute to your life. Acknowledgement fosters an attitude of gratitude, and gratitude is the magical fuel that makes everything flow more beautifully.

When people engage in these practices, inevitably they begin to experience a more settled frame of mind and become more aware of their relationship to everything in life. It is as if the various practices are paving the way for an even deeper experience, and meditation is the way there.

Edward Viljoen is the senior minister at the Center for Spiritual Living in Santa Rosa.

He is the author of the Kindle books Bhagavad-Gita for Beginners and Science of Mind and Spirit for Beginners, and coauthor of Spirit Is Calling, Practice the Presence and Seeing Good at Work.  (Tarcher/Penguin)

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