What is Spirituality? Part II: Is This All There Is?

Growing up, even in the church, does not automatically lead to one developing spiritual disciplines or practices. Moving in that direction requires a good deal of self-consciousness and awareness that is normally not present when we are young. What, then, is it that leads one to the point where they decide to pursue spirituality as a major part of life.

Sometimes, as mentioned in Part I, it is a traumatic experience, like a pandemic or the death of someone dear or losing one’s job and seeing no clear path as to how one will get back to work again, or when?

Sometimes one begins to pursue spirituality in the midst of fairly ordinary life, when one achieves a goal they have worked towards for a long time, such as a college degree or a certain job or getting married or having children or achieving wealth and success at work. We tend to think that if we can just achieve these kinds of goals that we will automatically feel happy and fulfilled. But, sometimes, maybe most of the time, at the very point of success, we may find ourselves asking, “Is this all there is? Shouldn’t I feel happier, more fulfilled, more motivated to achieve even more?”

There are different ways of talking about this initial stage when we begin the quest for a deeper spirituality. Ron DelBene calls it an awakening that grows out of the sense that we are missing something. We all know the experience of craving food and opening the refrigerator, not sure what it is we really want. We finally settle on something, eat it, and then realize that food did not relieve our craving. So we go back, grab something else, and maybe even a third thing, until we are too full, and yet we still do not feel satisfied. [See DelBene, The Hunger of the Heart, 19]

That is the way it is with physical hunger, and it is similar with spiritual hunger, the hunger of the heart. Suddenly we are awakened to the notion that we are missing something, and we become determined to figure out what that is.

This awakening creates a kind of yearning that is inherent in who we are as human beings:  a yearning to know ourselves better and to feel closer to God and other people. St. Augustine put it this way: “My heart is restless until it rests in thee.” The Psalmist writes:      

             As a deer longs for flowing streams, 

                  so my soul longs for you, O God.

           My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. [Psalm 42:1-2]

This experience of yearning and awakening leads to seeking, as we begin to explore the ways our thinking and feeling are beginning to change as we search for a path that will deepen who we are and begin to satisfy the longing for greater fulfilment in life.

At first this yearning may lead to fear as we face reality and ask ourselves: but can I really change? Can I really grow as a spiritual person? Can I become a person of deeper faith, compassion and love?

This fear is compounded by the cultural, and even at times the churchly, view of spirituality: that it is only for special people of uncharacteristically deep faith, which leaves me out. However, as Richard Foster writes about the classical Spiritual Disciplines (which we will list and discuss in Part III), “We must not be led to believe that the Disciplines are for spiritual giants and hence beyond our reach, or for contemplatives who devote all their time to prayer and meditation. Far from it, God intends the Disciplines for the spiritual life to be for ordinary human beings and are best exercised in the midst of our normal daily activities.” [Celebration of Discipline, 1.]

In fact, a true mark of the spiritual life is humility.  It is “self-righteousness” that gets in the way of spiritual growth, as Jesus pointed out repeatedly, because the self-righteous believe they are better than others and are lacking nothing in and of themselves. The humble, on the other hand, acknowledge their weakness and failings, and their struggle to trust themselves to God and other people. The humble also realize that spirituality is not a destination to which we arrive, but a constant journey. In the words of Thomas Merton, “We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything but beginners all of our life!” [Contemplative Prayer, 37]

In the next post I will share my own personal experience of spiritual awakening when I was age 33. Part of that awakening was from reading the writings of Thomas Merton, and almost immediately I printed the following quotation from Merton and taped it to a wall at home so I would constantly see it and be reminded that the spiritual journey always begins in humility:

Poppies at the foot of the Organ Mountains, Las Cruces, NM, 3/20

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore, I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.” [Thoughts in Solitude, 83]