I have learned that a hand placed on my back, or any simple touch, with the reminder to breathe can re-focus me. I have learned that I can stop my own spirals into anxious patterns with slow and controlled movement, breath, and speech. I have learned that I can channel my despair and confusion into art, poetry, if I just slow down enough to let it change.
I’m new to this blogging thing and thought I would use these first three posts to talk about the mind, body, and spirit. I find most Traditions tend to have an emphasis on one of these. To me all three have to be treated with respect and held in equal value. This third post is about my process for reaching my spirit and how I use it.
This will be the hardest post I’ve written yet. Its easier for me to talk about the mind and the body than the spirit. Part of that is how intertwined the three are. Part of this is that as I mentioned in the last two posts, I rely heavily on the mind and body to connect to my spirit. I will take this post to talk about how i individually practice my spirituality. In my next post I’ll talk about my spiritual expression in community and what the value of each are.
I find that it takes an honest reflection of the union between my mind and body to even reach my soul. This means for me to get the most out of a moment of deep spiritual connection, my body and mind both need to be aligned. This manifests for me as a focus on small rituals, things throughout a service or practice that are repeated. I use something like standing for song or prayer as a chance to put my mind and body to work together to accomplish an intentionally set goal. To stand slowly or sit with all my weight, even the whole way down. The key to this has been to keep these things simple and small so I'm not overtaxing my body or brain. Selecting something that keeps my mind and body together allows me to let them support each other so that they can both let go of some of the pressures they each bear. These little things help me to stay engaged and to come into a space of the spirit.
I should say that outside of my work with congregations, I rarely attend any type of spiritual gathering. My spiritual interaction is mostly done on my own and the most common way for me to formally engage my spirit is through a meditative prayer ritual. It changes slightly every time. But I often start by finding music. I’m not much of a musician and don’t find playing music to be as revelatory as some do. But music is important to help me find rhythm in my meditation and to change the way my mind is working as I enter the prayer time.
The next thing I do is pick a spot on the floor, usually in the middle of the space. For me the process of setting and unsetting the space is a major part of my practice. At this point I usually start the music and gather a candle and lighter and I may reduce the lighting in the room. From here, I like to do every step as slowly as possible. This helps me break myself of the racing thoughts of the modern world and slow my being down.
From the edge of the space I walk to a point I picked earlier. Once I'm there, I slowly sit down on that point and place the candle in front of me. I light the candle and maybe incense, and begin a simple seated meditation. When I feel im ready to pray, I either do some form of spoken prayer or more often do a movement prayer such as a sequence from my martial arts practice. Once this has run its course, I return to my seated meditation and slowly begin undoing all the set up I did. This time, trying to be even slower then when I set the space.
For me, trying to focus on ritual and responsiveness at the same time is what has helped to feed me in my individual spiritual life. Small things like this are the only ways that I’ve been able to choose the time and place to interact with my spirit. Small spiritual joys happen every day but these alone haven’t been enough to feed me completely, nor has the life of congregational christanity. This makeshift ritual is one of the ways I’ve found to feed myself spiritually.
There is a right way to interact with your spirit but your right way and my right way are different ways. Please don’t think this is some kind of prescription. This is what has worked for me. I so rarely run into any real conversation about individual spiritual expression that I wanted to share this thought and maybe spur a dialog.
Ian Pirkey
