KMS Blog

Why does believing you are a spiritual person not really amount to much of anything at all?  

There’s an interesting phenomena here in Boulder.  A lot of people one meets profess to being “spiritual” in some way or another, by which they usually mean: “I believe in being good to the environment, being socially responsible, being a good partner and parent, living as sustainably as possible, and being respectful of others’ view.  I also believe in (insert one of the following): god, energy, a greater power, a divine presence, an essence, Gaia, etc.” These sorts of "spiritual" beliefs are an excellent repudiation of believing in a single god for a single people (see the Middle East for how the one god thing is working out). Many people here, as in other places, have rejected religion as too narrow, rejected mainstream Western culture as too shallow and short-sighted, and rejected atheism or agnostism as too cold, impractical, and out-of-touch with the connection they feel. 
(Image above is of Jun Po Roshi -- think this guy gets easily rattled?) 

Another  way of saying it is that spiritual beliefs are an evolution from a dominant culturally-created and believed-in god to one that is more personal, independent, specific to the individual, inclusive, and tolerant of other gods, beliefs, and ideas. In this sense, these beliefs are positive and beneficial, and do indeed foster more toleration and open-mindedness. 

However, these spiritual beliefs are, still, just beliefs, no more or less substantial than the ones they are repudiating.  (Ever see people with “religious beliefs” and people with “spiritual beliefs” shout at one another across picket lines, as if shouting their beliefs will somehow get them into the skulls of the others?)  The bottom line is that these kinds of beliefs are often associated with some kind of minimally-spiritual practice like yoga (at least as it is practiced here in the West where it's almost entirely about the body).  And then there are littlte micro communities where people get together and affirm their mutual beliefs.  The problem is this: believing you are “spiritual” doesn’t really mean anything except you carry a certain set of beliefs. 

The problem with beliefs is that they tend to crumble and fall apart under strain — they are, after all, merely concepts and ideas held together by the mind.  In my own experience, I have frequently seen so-called “spiritual” people, who want a “spiritual relationship”, resort to all manner of base and petty actions, reactions, retaliations, distortions, and selfish need.   Why is this? 
To create real change, lasting change, one needs a true spiritual practice and not just beliefs.  A practice is just that — the practice of actually being that which you claim to be!  Practice transcends belief entirely.  

Think of it with this analogy: a man watches lots of Kung Fu movies, thinks about Kung Fu, talks to his friends about Kung Fu, owns Kung Fu posters and T-shirts, and hangs out with a Kung Fu community.  He thinks about Kung Fu all the time.  Yet when a street mugger attacks him, he is left utterly defenseless because he has no practice.  All he has is his concepts and his beliefs, and nothing more.  So he gets his ass kicked.  A Kung Fu practice, on the other hand, where one trains the body and the mind through endless repetition and training, results in the ability to defend oneself against real world aggression — often by not having to ever engage a potential combatant, because the latter senses the confidence and presence of the practitioner.   

A spiritual practice is no different.  Because one trains the mind on a meditation cushion, under the watchful eye of a master of some sort (you can no more teach yourself spiritual insight than you can teach yourself Kung Fu) the mind grows and evolves.  Your mind, like the martial artist’s body, becomes more resilient to challenge, more able to hold space in conflict, more able to see perspectives even in heated disagreement, more able to be truly compassionate not just in words and beliefs, but in actions.  It allows for you to actually be the things you believe when it matters most — in conflict, in heated exchanges, in the face of national disasters, when one’s own life gets turned topsy-turvy through childbirth, marriage and divorce, disease, old age, suffering, and death.  Beliefs are cold comfort in the most challenging times, because they’re just ideas, just concepts.  But a spiritual practice leads to the kinds of experience and insight that ground the practitioner into a deeper truth, a deeper reality, a deeper version of their own true face. 

So if you want peace and happiness, or a loving and spiritual relationship with a partner, or a meaningful and rewarding relationship with your children and friends, develop something stronger than beliefs to support those desires.  A spiritual practice trains the emotional body to withstand and respond to the very worse things that life will, inevitably and to every single person, throw.  

Get out of your mind, and get onto a cushion.  Stop believing you’re a spiritual person because you stand around and talk about it, go to yoga once a week, and recyle your bottles.  Start believing you’re a spiritual person because that’s your experience, your truth -- yes, but more than that, your insight has been forged in the fire of meditation, tested under the careful gaze of a spiritual master, and put into practice in the most difficult and challenging areas of your life.   

Then you have so much more than belief.  You have a practice, and life itself becomes your teacher, your friend, your best insight into your true nature.