Inner  Frontier
Fourth Way Spiritual Practice

 

Inner Work


For the week of February 12, 2007


Swimming Upstream

The tides of our spirit ebb and flow. We relish those days when the currents carry us smoothly toward our desired destination. But the hard truth includes other days of swimming against the tide through choppy waters. Perhaps events conspire against us or our body weighs us down with inertia or pain, while inwardly we grow agitated or despondent. To maintain our inner work on those days, we reach deep into our reservoir of commitment and momentum from our previous efforts, reconnect with why we practice, remember the sacred heights that await us, and recall that help will certainly meet us if we bootstrap ourselves upward despite our difficulties.

Those times of unbridled thoughts, destructive emotions, painful sensations, and unwanted events leave us little room to maneuver. We can, however, pick a simple and familiar practice and then do our best to work at it, stay with it, and return to it again and again. The very hardships of the day can provide a source of energy, perhaps an uncomfortable energy that, nevertheless, we can use to positive result.

More subtle opportunities arise in the midst of bleak days. We can examine our reactions, see what it is we dislike and cannot bear, and in so doing gain invaluable insight into our attachments and identifications. We can approach the crucial choice to let go of our clinging and displeasure, to let go the constraints of our self-centeredness, and to widen our horizon beyond the merely personal. Working from the specifics to the more general, we practice non-clinging on those down days of hanging onto our preferences of how life should be. This does not mean we give up trying to improve our life, inwardly and outwardly, but rather that we learn to do so without the unnecessary layers of attachment and anguish.

When the undesirable assails us, instead of seeing only at what we deem undesirable, we also look at the source of our attitude toward it and thereby loosen its grip. And we use that resulting bit of freedom to reengage our spiritual work of sensing, presence, prayer, kindness, meditation, and equanimity.

For this week, if and when necessary, practice swimming upstream.


     

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