A truly spiritual life is a life dedicated to a series of self-transcending commitments. By self-transcending I do not mean self-denying or self-negating, I mean something that is all-inclusive and not ego driven. I also mean something that is for the benefit of all beings. But essentially self-transcending commitments are doorways into all-inclusive reality, the reality of our true nature that is the fabric of our actual existence. In a sense, spiritual practice is the practice of helping true nature realize itself and embody itself as each of our lives as consciously as possible.

I do not intend this to be understood in a theoretical way, because to say that our practice is the practice of helping true nature realize itself is more of a poetic statement. It is something that you feel and intuit more than something that you believe or hold as a concrete fact. It is a way of understanding and approaching spirituality and spiritual practice from a broad and non-egocentric perspective. True nature is our true nature, and it is also something that we are serving and helping, and it is also serving and helping each of us as well. This is the paradox of spiritual practice that is so important to understand. But this understanding can only grow out of practice like a flower grows out of the ground. We cannot truly understand this paradox abstractly in our conceptual mind, it only grows out of the soil of committed spiritual practice. Which is to say that we must do it in order to understand it. Most things in life are like this, you must do them in order to understand them.

You cannot understand what an apple tastes like unless you eat an apple, or what it feels like to create music unless you are a musician, or what if feels like to give birth to a baby until you actually give birth. There is an old saying that expresses this idea in a different way. It says, “Do not judge someone until you walk a mile in their shoes.” I think that our world would be a much kinder and loving place if we all put this into practice. Such a practice is a good example of a self-transcending commitment. It is a good spiritual practice because it is not egocentric, it is wisdom born of actual human experience. This is something that we need to remember, wisdom is always and only born of non-egocentric human experience. Wisdom is not an abstraction, is not a belief, opinion, or reaction; it is born of experience.

Spiritual practice is so important because it is rooted in experience, meaning that it is something that you do. It is a commitment to doing something rather than merely thinking and conceptualizing. This is why we meditate and bring great awareness to each moment of our lives, and question our beliefs, and inquire, and seek to embody our understanding within the context of our daily lives. It is exacting, humbling, joyous and liberating spiritual practice. It is true nature waking up to itself and embodying itself as this very life. It is who and what we are, and it is also what we serve moment to moment through our commitment to being as awake and loving as we can. My teacher said that we are always being, and always becoming Buddha. This is true wisdom, not too attached to always and already being, and not too attached to always becoming. To experience this is to be like an eternal stable mountain that flows like water nourishing the entire earth. This to me is what the spiritual life is.

Copyright © 2021 Adyashanti.