Inner  Frontier
Fourth Way Spiritual Practice

 

Inner Work


For the week of: August 13, 2007

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Spiritual Heroism

Day to day, moment to moment, life presents us with the mundane and the heavenly, the trivial and the vital, the difficult and the easy, the superficial and the weighty, the pain and the joy, the problem and the solution, the ordinary and the extraordinary. In all these pairs, however, life’s offering tends strongly toward the first rather than the second. So here we are, making our way in the trenches of our physical, material life while hoping for some semblance of an evolving inner life, an engagement with the sacred.

Heroes are made in these trenches. Can we rise to the challenge of fulfilling, with quality, all that our physical, familial, professional, and societal life asks of us, and still have enough inner resources left for presence, prayer, and meditation? Those inner resources derive from commitment and devotion to the path.

In the actual midst of our life, we practice. In the face of all the difficulties, demands, and distractions, we devote an ongoing portion of our attention and energy to the path, to being here, to being the one living my life. The spiritual hero is the one who actually practices, who engages the methods of the path, even while living a full external life. We perform small acts of every-day inner heroism in coming back to presence even when drawn away from ourselves, in letting go the anger and the daydream before they consume us, in praying from our heart, in sitting in the stillness of meditation, and in acts of kindness and responsibility. The more one practices, the greater the heroism.

Heroes give extraordinary service. The spiritual hero serves the sacred and thereby serves all life. Heroic personal sacrifice comes in pursuing the path in the face of distractions and obstacles, in transforming those distractions and obstacles into occasions for inner work.

Nobility of purpose drives the spiritual hero. Inner work produces the higher energies needed by our society, by the Sacred, and by our soul. Inner work guides the hero toward just, compassionate, and creative actions in accord with the will of the sacred. The further the hero advances along the path, the more refined the energies produced and the more effective and appropriate the actions undertaken.

For this week, make yourself a candidate for spiritual heroism by rising above your usual level of practice.


     

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