Inner Work

For the week of December 26, 2005

Our Individual Program

We can approach inner work opportunistically by responding spontaneously to those moments of grace that awaken us. Such spiritual work might include letting go, relaxation, following the promptings of conscience, kindness, excellence, and full engagement in our actions, gratitude, and the work of presence. A complementary and even more necessary approach erects the scaffolding to support our path by creating a program of practice. Without regular, repeated, balanced practice, we tend to lose ourselves in the movement of life and make little progress in our spiritual development. Such a program of inner work creates the essential foundation for growth of being and purification of will. Within that context of regularity, our spontaneous inner work can flower.

But blanket prescriptions for practice miss the mark. We need to adapt our inner work to our own current propensities and imbalances, understanding and abilities. We work from where we are toward where we wish to be. All that blocks us from simple, stable presence, all that limits our vision to a small, self-centered world, all that keeps us from absorbing and responding to the grace that continually flows from the sacred, all this forms the field of our inner work.

To that we bring the wonderful tools of transformative spirituality developed by those who have gone before us. Primary among these are meditation, prayer, awareness of our body of sensation, conscious breathing, and presence. Given these tools, we fashion a regular program of practice that fits us and that we return to again and again, day after day, week after week, year after year. The importance of that regularity cannot be overstated. Each instance is a step along our path. While we may not notice the changes day to day, the long term impact of repeated practice is profound. New perceptions, understanding, openness, and inner freedom develop gradually as our level of being changes.

To discover the forms of meditation and prayer most effective for us now requires experimentation and adaptation, seeing what works and what does not, what needs to be added, subtracted, or changed. Repetition does not mean stagnation: rather, it creates an opportunity to grow. We offer our best at each instance of practice, seeking new depth in our meditation, an ever-closer approach to the sacred in our prayer, a more constant and robust presence in our daily routines, a more loving involvement in our relationships, and greater creativity, engagement and efficacy in what we do. In the earlier stages of our spiritual path, we turn to others for guidance in these matters. But as our work deepens, we need to rely on our own intuition of how to practice and how to contribute to the spiritual economy of the Earth.

For this week examine your path, your own program of spiritual practice. What are its elements? Is it alive with the vibrant potential for transformation? Does it need adjustment? To what degree do you carry it out?

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