When does spiritual practice end?

“How do you step from the top of a 100-foot pole?”

 … Zen koan

This passage was inspired by a dear soul who recently rejoined one of my discussion groups after an absence of about two years. When they left the study group, they felt they had outgrown the practice, that they no longer needed the practice in their lives, and that they had learned all they needed to learn from the practice. When they returned to the study group, they shared that their life had taken a ‘bad turn’ over the past couple of years, that they found themselves in a ‘bad place,’ and that they needed to return to the study group for support and to find the peace and tranquility they had acquired before they left the study group the first time. I asked this dear soul if they had engaged in any spiritual practice during their absence from the study group. They responded, “No. I didn’t think I needed it anymore.”

I have watched and witnessed this all too familiar scenario play itself out in the lives of many a precious soul. But it never ceases to intrigue me how we think we have risen above our spiritual practice to a point where we do not think we need it any longer. This brought me to ask myself, “When does spiritual practice end?”

Greg Goode, a non-dualistic supporter, suggests that spiritual practice ends when we no longer seek what we are looking for in the practice.¹ Goode believes the question comes up in most faith and spiritual traditions “because the ‘Yes’ to practice is built into their very structure.” Goode suggests that in non-dualistic thinking, practice may only make matters worse because the practice itself “will only reinforce the sense of a separate self that thinks it can gain something. What must happen is not practice, but the disappearance of this sense of self.”

In his article ‘At the End of Spiritual Practice,’ C.E. Lowman shares an equally-interesting perspective on spiritual practice. Lowman writes “…after a certain altitude, you will need to shed them [the practices], at least as a means to an end. Thus, we never want to overly invest in techniques or paths, or confuse love of Truth with the vehicles that help us find it. Indeed, the one who has dispensed with meditation and yoga is likely more realized than the one who boasts about meditating two hours a day for forty years, or who can bend in every known asana. You know you’re coming to the end of practice when you begin wondering, ‘Now what? Is it possible to go any further with doing things to be spiritual?’ Desire drives practice. You want to learn something. Be somebody. Which is both necessary, and in the long run, problematic, especially when it comes to matters of self-realization. The last little bit of work, or practice, is living without desire. Accepting what is.”²

Both Goode and Lowman appear to be making the same point when it comes to spiritual practice. For as long as we are seeking something from our practice and/or from life, for as long as we desire something outside of ourselves, we need spiritual practice. But when we give up ‘desire,’ when we finally learn to accept what is, spiritual practice becomes unnecessary.

For those mere mortals, like myself, who until desire is shed and we can ‘be’ with and in life, accepting what is, nothing more and nothing less, spiritual practice may be a necessary guiding light to help us shed our sense of self. Spiritual practice is the vehicle that will help us shed our perception of separation from Source, the Divine, God. When this happens, our spiritual practice will become life itself.

Shanti, Namaste, Agapé,

1.   Greg Goode. “Is Spiritual Practice Necessary”. www.nonduality.com/goode5.htm