What Spiritual Practice Has Helped You the Most?
This is difficult for me to single out any one practice because I needed several. Here is a list of what I have found to be most beneficial. More information about each is listed below:
1. Learning to love myself and counseling
2. Simple Tools of Great Value
3. Spirituality’s Fab Four: Devotion, Humility, Surrender & Contemplative Practices (contemplation, meditation and prayer)
4. A personalized Prayer Compilation that evolves as I do
5. 12-Step meetings for codependency, ACA, CoDA or Al-Anon, (for emotional sobriety)
6. Reading powerful spiritual books. (Be careful with what you ingest.)
I begin with practices for self-love and counseling because I believe emotional well-being is essential to reduce the distortion in our perception of the world. If we have a healthy self-esteem we won’t be as “needy” in personal relationships, we’ll have more capacity to properly love other people, and our lives will have much more joy. Being loving pours positive energy to others, and because Love is the Essence of God, this energy is limitless. To love is not draining, but invigorating. If we are pouring out of our ego, we will become exhausted. Love is essential to having a great life.
Metaphorically, our emotions are like the chain that tethers a floating dock to the bottom of a lake. If the chain is too long the dock can wander off into our neighbor’s business. If the chain is too short, or all knotted up, the dock (we) will drown in neediness, sucking the energy out of every room we walk into grasping for validation from those around us. As Maslow’s hierarchy of needs outlines, having deficiency in our esteem will prevent us from moving into self-actualization and hinder our spiritual potential.
The Simple Tools of Great Value are an excerpt from my favorite author and teacher:
“One can pick a primary tool, plus a few others, but many are not needed. Simple tools consistently applied will result in the revelation of spiritual truths that do not have to be acquired intellectually because they present themselves with great clarity. In addition, they only present themselves when suitable and serviceable, and because they are not an acquisition of the mind, they do not end up as spiritual vanity. Some tried-and-true basic tools that have brought about tremendous results over the centuries are as follows:
1. Be kind to everything and everyone, including oneself, all the time, with no exception.
2. Revere all of life in all its expressions, no matter what, even if one does not understand it.
3. Presume no actual reliable knowledge of anything at all. Ask God to reveal its meaning.
4. Intend to see the hidden beauty of all that exists—it then reveals itself.
5. Forgive everything that is witnessed and experienced, no matter what. Remember Christ, the Buddha, and Krishna all said that all error is due to ignorance. Socrates said all men can choose only what they believe to be the good.
6. Approach all of life with humility and be willing to surrender all positionalities and mental/emotional arguments or gain.
7. Be willing to forgo all perceptions of gain, desire, or profit and thereby be willing to be of selfless service to life in all of its expressions.
8. Make one’s life a living prayer by intention, alignment, humility, and surrender. True spiritual reality is actually a way of being in the world.
9. By verification, confirm the levels of consciousness and spiritual truth of all teachers, teachings, spiritual groups, and literature with which one intends to be aligned or a student.
10. Accept that by spiritual declaration, commitment, and surrender, Knowingness arises that provides support, information, and all that is needed for the entire journey.
The most powerful tool that is in the province of the will is devotion. Thus, it is not just spiritual truth but the degree of one’s devotion to it that empowers it to become transformative. A great classic that demonstrates the efficacy of simplicity and devotion is that of Brother Lawrence’s The Practice of the Presence of God (1692), which emphasizes the importance of constancy.”
David R. Hawkins, MD, PhD, Transcending The Levels Of Consciousness: The Stairway to Enlightenment (W. Sedona, AZ. Veritas Publishing, 2006) pages 335-336.
Spirituality’s Fab Four are basic “streetable” practices that appear in all the major world religions. These four practices reduce spiritual pride and till the soil of our hearts, helping us remain teachable and promotes releasing our attachments and aversions. (More about this in a later post.)
A Personalized Prayer Contemplation is something that evolved by compiling the most powerful nuggets from my journal including accountability questions and prayers. Instead of looking through the journal trying to find something that profoundly impacted me a few days, weeks or months ago, it was placed on a single sheet of paper. The document is alive and the content changes often as Holy Spirit reveals another attachment to release or inspirational quote.
Healthy 12-Step Meetings are wonderful! To be in a room where people share their story, their challenges and triumphs, where others simply hold space for you. These groups operate in unconditional love and are tremendously healing. No matter what, these folks will have your back.
Powerful Spiritual Books that challenge me, encourage me to go within to and surrender my life completely to God. This can go too far if we are constantly reading many books and fail to implement any of the things we read. Some days, I will read something very simple and profound. Stop reading and immediately go into meditation. Great teaching nuggets that can be transformational are like a lozenge that takes time to dissolve into our being. Cramming in much information that is not integrated can actually be negative. I have done this and used much information to sound authoritative, puffing up my spiritual pride. If we become an encyclopedia of spiritual knowledge but lack fruit of the Holy Spirit, “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23) then our ego is becoming more dominant than Spirit.
To choose a single practice as the most effective is impossible, because there have been different seasons where some of the practices were more important than others. That being said, from a place of love and healthy sense of self, all the other practices seem to fall into place more easily, as inner negativity is decreased.
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