Practices From the Inside Out: Living Everyday Spiritual Life

Living Everyday Spiritual Life

It is easy for us to assume spiritual life is for special people to practice at special times in special places. We lose sight of everyday spiritual life.

Some of us travel great distances to visit places we think have spiritual significance. We may believe spiritual life is all about extraordinary things happening to extraordinary people. It can be a challenge to see what spiritual life has to do with people like us.

We may think spiritual life happened a long time ago, but does not anymore.

People often unconsciously divide their lives into different categories. We may have work life, family life, physical life, emotional life. Some of us have so many categories we cannot see how there could be room for spiritual life. There are only so many hours in a day. We have only so much mental energy.

How can we add another category for spiritual life?

We do not have time or energy to spend a special day each week on spiritual life. The people we think of as the special, spiritual life people may not be friends of ours. It seems to be too much work. We have too many other things to do.

That is not how I experience spiritual life.

Spiritual life is not limited to particular times or places, nor to certain kinds of people. We do not need to go to faraway, ancient cities to find spiritual life.

Spiritual life is not a separate category asking us to spend time or energy.

We are living everyday spiritual life. The challenge for us is to realize how we are living everyday spiritual life, and how it lives in us.

Spiritual life is not about living to follow rules, but about seeing life in new ways.

What is Everyday Spiritual Life?

Our assumption there is something special about spiritual life reflects how we see life. When we view our lives as separated into categories, we focus on the differences between them.

They may allow us to feel more in control of our lives, but the differences we see are artificial. Our lives are not sorted, hour by hour, into assorted kinds of life.

We live, and the life we live is a whole. Even when we try to organize our lives into separate categories, life slops over the boundaries.

Many people, for example, see strong walls dividing spiritual life from other aspects of life. They believe there are clear distinctions between sacred and everyday which cannot be breached.

We divide the spiritual from the everyday and keep them separated.

People believe spiritual life belongs in certain places and not in others. We see some people as spiritual and others as more normal.

We tend to treat spiritual life differently from everyday life. People may act or even dress one way to go to a spiritual place and another way for everyday.

What are the differences between everyday life and spiritual life? The distinctions have become more and more challenging for me to see.

When we take a walk during our workday to clear our heads, is that work life or spiritual life? As we listen to a friend’s struggles, is that friendship life or spiritual life?

As boundaries dissolve I become more comfortable with life as a whole.

Everyday spiritual life becomes evident as our carefully constructed categories fall apart.

We may struggle to keep our categories neat, but life seeks life. Our lives flow together into integrated wholes.

Where Do We Find Everyday Spiritual Life?

Many of us are accustomed to seeing spiritual life as something separate from everyday life. We may be comfortable with this distinction and not particularly eager to recognize spiritual life.

As we begin to appreciate how our lives flow together we start to see everyday spiritual life. Spiritual life is not magic or hard to find in our everyday experience. We may need to practice a little to begin to experience it for ourselves.

Some of the people with whom I work have spent much of their lives participating in religious organizations. They may come to me for help finding the differences separating work life and spiritual life. People can get tired or confused by all the things they need to do.

The challenge for them can be finding rest when they see spiritual life as their job.

When I ask them questions like Where do you feel the strongest spiritual life? they can usually tell me right away. Their responses are rarely in worship or in sacred reading. Some people find themselves weighed down even by praying.

We find everyday spiritual life in the deep meaning of our lives, not only in special places. There is everyday spiritual life all around us, and within us. We find it by becoming open to its presence.

Opening to Everyday Spiritual Life

There is no shortage of spiritual life in the world. As we learn to become open to it its abundance is revealed to us.

Becoming open to spiritual life can feel overwhelming. Our desire to organize and analyze spiritual life may be strong. Our openness depends on not trying to control, but on our willingness to embrace the possibilities.

Some people seem to believe they have found the handle to spiritual life. The fact is spiritual life is a relationship, not something we can control or plan.

Spiritual life fills us and changes the way we see ourselves, each other, and everything else. We may learn important lessons from the examples of other people. Each of us reflects and applies the insights and questions of our reflection in our own ways.

We share our questions and insights, our fears and anxieties, our stories. Together we help each other remove the barriers we have constructed and live everyday spiritual life.

Spiritual life is not limited by the boundaries or categories we create trying to control it.

How is everyday spiritual life living in us today?

Why are we trying to pull our lives apart into different categories?

[Image by Shaury]

Greg Richardson is a spiritual life mentor and leadership coach in Southern California. He is a recovering attorney and university professor, and a lay Oblate with New Camaldoli Hermitage near Big Sur, California. Greg’s website is StrategicMonk.com, and his email address is [email protected].