Inner Work

For the week of May 12, 2008

Balance of Levels

We need balance in our spiritual practice: balance of heart, mind, and body, balance of inner and outer, balance of active and receptive, or effort and effortlessness, and balance of individual and group practice. But another necessary and perhaps more subtle type of balance is of levels of inner work, which we may summarize as sensing, presence, and prayer.

On the first level, sensing, we practice body awareness from within the body, grounding ourselves in our body, building up the sensitive energy of our inner body. At the same time we practice sensitive awareness of thoughts and emotions. On the second level, presence, we become ourselves; we enter the experience of “I am conscious, here and now.” On the third level, prayer, we address the higher, exploring and developing our relationship with the sacred, and ultimately becoming one with the One. Here we take prayer in its broadest sense of any human action, inner or outer, intended to relate us to, or raise us into contact with, the Divine.

These three levels depend on each other. Building up sensation in our inner body gives consciousness a more stable platform. Otherwise consciousness would be momentary at best. Standing in conscious presence brings us closer to the sacred, setting the stage for us to reach beyond consciousness toward that higher level through prayer. Opening to the sacred can release a downpour of higher energies that profoundly enhance our inner body sensation and our conscious presence. This closes the loop of interdependence of the three levels of practice. Will acts as the central factor in that loop, first our will and then the higher will.

What if we feel distant from the sacred? Should we only focus on inner body sensation and presence? Should we postpone prayer until a later stage of our path, when we might deem ourselves worthy and prepared? That approach ignores the nonlinear character of the journey, the nonlinearity of spiritual realities not limited to time, but rather residing in the timeless. So any prayer work we do today directly affects our ability to relate to the Divine and thus prepares that relationship for our future path. If I pray today, in the deepest way I can, then that exploratory action reverberates through my life, enabling me to pray deeper still at other times.

Alternatively, what if we feel drawn only to prayer and neglect the other levels of inner work. Without the work of inner body sensation we tend to flounder. If we touch higher levels, such as conscious presence or the sacred world of light, we cannot maintain ourselves in those rarefied districts and our contact quickly evaporates. Without the work of conscious and intentional presence, we cannot maintain the wholeness of inner body sensation and we have no springboard into the sacred.

For this week, adjust the balance of levels of your inner work through sensing your inner body, through intentional, conscious presence, and through deepening your approach to the sacred in prayer.

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