Spirituality in Everyday Life

SPIRITUALITY IN EVERYDAY LIFE A Reflection by David Spangler

At a lecture recently, I was asked “What is the use of spirituality in everyday life? How can it help us address the problems of the world? We need action, not meditation.”
This is not an unusual question. I imagine most, if not all, spiritual teachers are asked it from time to time. Nor is it an unfair question. We are a practical species, after all, and we want to know not only how things work but how they will work for us and what benefit we will derive. And while the question as stated perpetuates a common misunderstanding that spirituality is other-worldly (and that meditation is what spirituality is all about), it carries a genuine caring of the questioner for the wellbeing of others and the world.
It also expresses the perplexity of a person raised in an industrial, technological, strongly materialistic culture faced with problems such as climate change, nuclear proliferation, the widening of the economic and social disparity between rich and poor nations, and terrorism that are themselves the by-products of such a culture and which are resistant to purely industrial, technological, or materialistic solutions.
The times we are in create stress, and we naturally want to relieve that stress, preferably as soon as possible, which means a desire for quick fixes. Like a magical spell, the speed of technological processes has entranced us and turned us into impatient, short-term thinkers who want our solutions and gratifications now.

Consider the irritation we may feel if our computers take thirty seconds to access a website instead of five. And when it comes to spirituality, if I can’t learn it and do it after a weekend course, then what use is it?
But spirituality has never been about short-term experiences or solutions. It is part of the “long wave” of human experience and growth. It some ways it’s not even about solutions but about the process of arriving at solutions, about how we think, how we feel, how we see, how we engage.
It is common to say that spirituality is about being rather than about doing. But this is a largely artificial and rhetorical distinction. When I act, I act from my being, and that I can act at all is because I have beingness. But we can also say that we come into being through our actions, that being itself is an action.
I think of incarnation as an ongoing act of will in relationship and engagement with the world. So, spirituality is as much about doing as it is about being. Indeed, I would say that spirituality and spiritual practice are about uniting the apparent dichotomies of being and doing into a unity, a wholeness of active presence. …
What does this mean in our everyday world? Well, think about those qualities or actions that we call “spiritual.” What might they have in common? Think about love, compassion, caring, forgiveness, peacefulness, integrity, coherency. What do they do? Think of them in terms of “I/hand” coordination, that is, how I blend, connect, and engage with my world.
Being loving or compassionate doesn’t make me otherworldly. Rather it gives me the “fine motor skills” of human relationship that can enhance communication, cooperation, understanding, effectiveness. …

And if I have cultivated an inner peace, I’m more able to focus on the larger patterns of humanity and the sacred, on the wholeness of things around me and the wholeness of the world.
Spiritual practice and techniques, from meditation and prayer to ritual and reflection, are our finger exercises to develop the skills of coordination. Love coordinates. Peacefulness coordinates. Compassion and forgiveness coordinate. They are the fine motor skills of good human relationships. Attunement to nature coordinates and is the fine motor skill of good environmental relationships. …