THE SOUL'S CENTRE

Starting a Spiritual Practice in Times of Trial.

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS

Over the last weeks and months, I have been contacted by several people around the globe who have been much troubled by the acceleration of world-events, and unable to maintain their equanimity in the face of sudden changes, or the prospect of great alteration to their lives. So I promised that I would put up this post.

Cave of Pythagorus: looking in..

The best and most effective way of managing our changing times, and not panicking your way to despair, is to establish and maintain a regular spiritual practice, which enables you to clarify, balance and nourish the soul, regardless of whether you have a religious background or a firmed-up spiritual affiliation. You can do this because we are all people of spirit, as well as people of body, with the soul as the medium by which we join those two perspectives on life together. Daily spiritual practice can give us stability and help build our capacity to be a well-balanced human being.

Of course, a regular practice is something that, done in the ordinary times, gives us the groundedness to deal with the difficult times, but I am aware that if you are now looking for this support, beginning to do this in the hard times is particularly challenging.

I remember a few years ago walking past a church in Oxford whose notice board advertised a series of talks by the vicar under the heading of ‘Minimum Belief.’ It made me laugh aloud at the time but, due to the increasing pace of life in general, and the recent changes that have thrown all that we know and held true up in a basket, we now actually do need to determine just what our absolute minimum practice might consist of.

The following is a basic practice that requires no other qualification than being human. Many years ago, a Quaker friend spoke to me about the basis of her own spiritual practice. She called it The Four Ss: Silence, Self-clarification, Something for yourself, Something for others. For her, these were the basic cornerstones of spiritual practice. They are pretty self-explanatory: a time of meditation in silence; a period of checking your words, deeds, motivations and thoughts; doing something that nourishes your soul; doing something that maintains our reciprocation with fellow beings.

This is just one model of a spiritual practice, of course: there are as many kinds of practice as you can imagine, and there is no ‘one right way!’ If you already have a healthy spiritual focus, you can bring that into it however you like. Use this model to provide points of recharging your battery, descaling or clarifying your life, as the basis for being a fully-living human being.

Breaking this down further, we will need to include some or all of the following as part of that basic practice.

Silence: stopping, taking a break, leaving your electronic devices alone and out of the room, closing your eyes, being in the oasis of silence. Breathing slowly and rhythmically to slow down, being aware of breath coming in and out of you - out-breathing takes away what is too much for you to hold, in-breathing brings you back into rhythm with the essence of the universe. Stilling your mind, not allowing it to follow thoughts. Fasting from news, or tv, or internet for a set period, whether hours a day or days in a week. Silence teaches us the essentials and opens us to the wider universe of possibility

Self Clarification: at the end of the day, go over how things were, the things done, said, thought; noting the annoyances, difficulties, your own reactiveness etc. but not dwelling on them to induce guilt.. Note what you learned about yourself, what you can do better next time, what worked out better due to how you behaved with thoughtfulness. Before bed, reversing the day in backwards sequence, allowing all that happened to be unwound from your system. A friend, life-coach, therapist or teacher can also help you with aspects of yourself that need further cleaning, improving, or your further growing or learning. Clarity grows as the result of dealing promptly with what has become burdensome.

Something for yourself: doing something that nourishes your soul: reading, listening to music; practicing your hobby, art or skill; allowing your entire self to be honoured by expressing itself; cultivating and growing yourself as a being who is part of the universe and not the main event. Self-respect grows when we honour our gift and how we tend it to nourish and encourage others.

Something for others: performing a service that benefits others - feeding the birds, helping a neighbour, spending time for or with someone who is less able; doing public or environmental service, providing help or advice, listening to a friend; opening up your heart with gratitude to the wider universe. Love grows when we share.

Repetition is the basis of your practice. If you are trying to establish a new pattern, it will take a lot of repetition. People often imagine that we should somehow graduate from daily repetition into something more interesting but, as my dear friend R.J.Stewart says to his students, ‘There is no “advanced”, there is an only practice.’ This is the same if you play the violin, or work out, or learn a language. Skillful repetition is your friend, believe me! I am still doing the same spiritual practice as I’ve done over many years. It occasionally has new rhythms and occasions, but it still there, foundational. I patrol it like the night watchman around the factory. It feeds and nourished me still and I resonate with it.

Consistency and regularity of repetition are your next line of defence. Looking first at the shape of your usual day, the kind of work your do and its intervals and patterns will help you determine how consistent you can be with the practice. A 9-5 day in a shop or office is going to be very different rhythm from fortnightly shift-work in a factory or hospital, for example when you do nights one week and days the following week. If you deliver parcels in a van, or have to attend vulnerable people in different locations as a social worker, your work is often a long stretch of interrupted effort. Use those rhythms to present you with openings to reconnect with what is essential.

SPACIOUSNESS AND BOUNDARIES

A lack of context in people's spiritual landscape is making them very uncertain. As people of spirit, human beings need context, grounding and connection. Without context, the spiritual experience is happening in a vacuum that is made worse by the secular or social avoidance of spirituality as a viable dimension of reality. In other words, some folk simply do not have any or little awareness of the interconnectedness of life, or that our words, thoughts and actions have effect somewhere. So, when you have no basic spiritual practice to maintain you in the ordinary times, what happens when the stressful and difficult times come along?.

I have been seeing increasing numbers of people who have no space left in them: they are like a phone that is full up with data, only they can't delete the stuff they don’t want. They are always going onto the next thing, receiving more and more stimulus, but not able to take the space that they so badly need, whether it is a day off, a holiday, or a more serious therapeutic withdrawal from the addiction of doing. At the other extreme, I am also seeing many whose whose boundaries are nearly utterly eroded, people who have become so utterly empathetic that they cannot tell the difference between self and other: they have no synaptic gaps in their system to help contain or separate things: it all jumbles together and confuses them.

Without the necessary boundaries, we become swamped; without spaciousness, we fall into mental confusion. This is why we need silence and self-clarification.

When mistrust, bitterness, and hatred spread all around, robbing us of mutual peace, respect and freedom, it is easy to feel powerless, and we have to return to the essentials of integrity, clarity and self-control, not to become mired by reactive response. When the walls of your world begin crowd nightmarishly in upon you, you need spaciousness and silence.

Only you can be the occasion for making space. Only you can determine where the boundaries need to be set. You are able to determine that. Take it within your silence, understand how you bestow or receive that. See how you can share ithat.

THE PLACE OF OUR TRUE ABIDING

Every spiritual practice has a sense of location to it, as well as a connection to the rhythms of the universe or to a particular spiritual story or scenario of inspiration. You live in a particular place, whether in a town, village or the country: it has its own nature and spirit. It may be just the place you happen to live at the present, rather than an ideal or ultimate home, but it is your home right now. Honour that place and allow it to witness you.

Around your place are all the directions, which are not just located geographically. These directions are also holy places in the world of spirit and you can experience them with your soul. No matter where you live in the world, these directions are associated with the winds that blow from those directions, and so different gifts, understandings and qualities are experienced by every person.

The sky is always above you, the earth beneath you. As you stand in the middle, in your own place, the directions surround you. Turn to them, and experience what they have to show to you. Make this practice your own by noticing and including land-features that are physically around you either near or far, within your own region or country: you can also note the quality of each direction on every side.

Facing the East you can say:

‘Before me is…(e.g. the East, the place of the sun’s arising…)

Behind me is …. e.g. the West, the place of the sun’s setting…)

To my left is….e.g. the North, the place of winter’s darkness -in the Northern Hemisphere) or summer’s light - in the Southern Hemisphere…)

To my right is…. `(e.g. the South, the place of summer’s brightness…. in the Northern Hemisphere, or the South, the place of winter’s darkness - in the Southern Hemisphere.

If it is night, you can observe the moon’s rhythms. If you are considering the wider patterns, then the constellations and planets are also part of the deep knowing. The world of nature , your deep ancestors (who are the shared ancestors of all living people) and many other togethernesses are part of your peaceful centre.

Call yourself home to your centre, be aware of the sky above and the earth below. Return to yourself and just be.

After a while your spiritual practice will become for you the place of your true abiding: the centre into which you can immediately enter to be at home with your soul, to become centred after disturbance or trouble, the place in which yourself and the universe and your spiritual sources can all be in communion together .

In the Place of our True Abiding, we reach for and find equanimity but, as the Buddhist Secretary-General to the United Nations, U Thant, once wrote:

‘This balance is achieved only as a result of deep insight into the nature of things, and primarily by contemplation and meditation. If one understands how unstable and impermanent all worldly conditions are, one learns to bear lightly the greatest misfortune or the greatest reward.’ [U Thant, View from the UN (Doubleday, 1978, pp. 20-25, 453-454].

I have not even mentioned prayer or meditation more specifically here, as that is enough for one post, but I trust you will find your way. Whatever moves your soul is what also feeds it: turn to it now and allow it to guide you surely!

Pythagoras’ Cave, Looking Out..

The help and resources of the present moment are always ready to address our needs. May your heart be peaceful, whatever the provocation and upset. We are all being tried at present, but we are here together, and where we come into the place of our true abiding, which transcends time, we create a great prayer.

THE PRAYER OF THIS MOMENT by Caitlín Matthews

Releasing the past, unknowing of the future
We inhabit this present place.
No god judges, rewards or punishes us.
We owe no-one our reward, 
Nor stain another with our judgement.
Joy rises with the dawn,
Abundance flows to our present need 
When we abide in the gift of this moment.
 
Falling into the moment,
We cease to appease the past,
We disentangle the future.
When the road unreels each moment.
Fate is a turning spindle,
And destiny a fine thread
Running through our fingers.
 
When we live each moment,
We cleanse the garment of the past,
Arresting the future's stain.
When we wear each naked moment,
We come richly caparisoned.
Pain and expectation shrink
As we walk the road with a song.

The GOLDEN VERSES course is a 25 centuries' old instruction from the teachings of Pythagoras on how to live in an ensouled cosmos at times of great change. The central aim of studying and embodying these teachings is to receive back and foster your essential self, and to come to know again the entire sacred cosmos - both seen and unseen - with respect. The verses also enable us to live with kindness, consideration, healthy introspection, and honesty: it is also suitable for people of any background.

It is continuing throughout this year, and the first 9 steps are already available on my Substack for those who wish to subscribe. All my new writing is happening there, where you can read it before anyone else. Subscriptions are $8 a month or $80 a year - (about £6.20 / £62.50)