What is integrated spirituality?
Meditation is very important for building our spiritual muscles and for cultivating our focus and clarity.
However where we really need this clarity is in our challenging experiences through out the day.
We need space from our reactions in moments where we are triggered (even if just subtly sometimes) and when we are relating to others.
It’s not much good to meditate an hour every day if all the while our loved ones are suffering around us, or if when we get off our cushion we are angry, unkind or distant with our family.
What good is meditation if we are not taking responsibility for our part in everyday things and our patterns of relating and behaviours.
We run the risk of being arrogant, thinking our view is the right view and everyone has to fit in with that.
Or the risk of ‘Spirit-splaining’ – where we see we are are oh so spiritual and others are the one’s with the problem and should learn to meditate.
Or we run the risk of ‘spiritual by-passing’ where our meditation/spiritual practice can perhaps even become a kind of unconscious avoidance/escapism from the grit and real hard stuff.
Spirituality is just as much, if not more, about your relationships than it is about your meditation or any scriptures.
Life is all about relationship, not about lifting off into some other realm or state.
Spiritual practice needs to infiltrate every aspect of our expression in the world. It needs to contribute to waking us up to our way of being in each moment.
We must learn to also bring our mindful introspection inside our moments of anger, our distance or our arrogance.
Here we can really implement change and unfolding love. Here is where the ‘tyre hits the road’.
This is one way of talking about integrated spirituality.
RATNA DYER 