Spiritual Practices
By Reverend Tom Capo
11/9/2014
As one of my spiritual practices, I read and reflect on a number of passages from different religious traditions. Many of the passages I receive by email each day. On October 26, I received this passage from Eknath Easwaran, the founder of the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation: “Without a tank full of gas, no car can drive very far. The mind, too, needs a full tank of vitality to draw on for patience, resilience, and creativity. Filling that tank every morning is one of the most practical purposes of meditation. The test of your meditation is: How long can you be patient with those around you? In the beginning, you should aim to make it at least to noon acting like the proverbial angel. Most of us, however, even if we start with a full tank, have little control over the thousand and one little pinpricks that drain vitality as we go along: worry, vacillation, irritation, daydreaming. By lunchtime the indicator may be hovering around empty. Then it is that you have to be acutely vigilant. The tank is nearly empty, but by sheer effort and deft defensive driving, and using the mantram, you manage to coast through to the end of the day without any serious accidents. The more effort you make, the more endurance you gain. The next day you may find the tank itself a little larger; you start the next day with a greater capacity for love and patience than before.”
A spiritual practice, at least from my perspective, serves a number of purposes: filling our vitality tank, grounding us in the truest part of ourselves, opening us up for enlightenment or deeper understanding of ourselves and the world, and connecting us to something greater than our own desires, needs, and feelings.
Ok, so, those are some purposes, but what the heck is a spiritual practice? Well, let’s start with characteristics and then consider a definition that might be useful, that might help us to decide what spiritual practice we could incorporate into our lives or what characteristics we might add to our current practices.
