Inner Work

For the week of May 23, 2005

Assessment and Motivation

Unless we live in a monastery, surrounded by constant reminders of the sacred work of transformation, one of the biggest difficulties we face in our spiritual path is simply remembering to practice, remembering to work at presence and the rest as we go about our daily business. We become so engrossed in our life situations, that we continually lose ourselves. And what enables us blithely to carry on living in this half-aware, pre-programmed, personality-pattern-driven style is that we remain generally unaware of it. Perhaps in our minds we intend to practice presence and awareness of sensation throughout the day. But when it comes down to actually doing it, we forget about it. And we largely ignore that fact, letting it slide out of awareness. We accept and expect to live without presence. We even adopt the unstated assumption that we ourselves have no real possibility of awakening, that our inner life will always be pretty much as it is now.

To find a way out of this conundrum, we consciously face our true situation by directly seeing the level of our inner work, or the lack thereof. And in facing up to it, we discover the possibility of doing something about it; we find our motivation once again.

The practice is simple and direct. Three times a day, late morning, late afternoon, and before going to bed, we stop to look back at our inner work during the preceding part of the day. We recall the quantity and quality of our presence, of whatever spiritual practice we may have engaged in during the previous hours.

In the effort to create our spiritual inner life, we take our motivation wherever we can find it. Self-assessment works. Knowing that soon we will face our own self-imposed reckoning, we find ourselves deciding to practice now so that we will have something positive to look back on when the time arrives to assess our inner work. Seeing our lack of inner work motivates us to fill that vacuum. We do not wallow in negative self-criticism, blame, or hopelessness. Instead, our growing discomfort with our half-aware life spurs us to pick ourselves up and practice more. Facing our own truth helps us act to shape that truth. Seeing the gaps in our inner work shows us how to improve and extend our practice. Seeing our moments of presence encourages us and moves us toward more. And the one who sees all this is our own conscience, our deepest self.

For this week, three times each day, at the end of the morning, at the end of the afternoon, and at the end of the evening, review the level of your inner work during the preceding part of the day.

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