If you were to ask me how I would define the spiritual life, I would be very uncomfortable. I’m not sure what I would say. I’m not sure how to define something like that. My greatest discomfort would come in thinking that someone might ask me to define it. Who am I to define something as mysterious and broad and individual as spirituality?
I’d probably try to avoid the question if I could.
I don’t know, maybe there’s a book you could read or something. Do you know anyone else who might know about this? I know this sounds crazy, but I’ve never tried to put a definition to that idea. I’d just be pulling stuff out of the air and making it up right while I was talking to you.
But if you said, “That’s okay. I just want to know what you think. Right off the top of your head is fine. I won’t hold you to it or quote you or paste it all over the internet or anything. But yeah, what do you think it means for a person to follow a spiritual path?”
If you said that, I’d probably agree to give it a try. I’d interlace my fingers and drop my hands into my lap. I’d close my eyes and let go of my head so that it slowly dropped forward until my chin was almost touching my chest. Then I would take a deep breath and shut out everything in the world except your question.
This is what I would say:
If there is an intelligence behind the universe, behind all that exists. If there is an intelligence that put these forces in motion, the forces that cause tides to pull and the plates of the earth to shift. The forces that pull matter together in swirling galaxies and blast energy outward when stars die. If there is an intelligence behind all of this, I know nothing about it. Any ideas I have about this intelligence will be wrong. Any name I give it, Hashem or God or Allah, will be a false name. Whenever I think I have come to understand this being, my understanding will have to be broken down and rebuilt, only to be broken again.
Yet in my ignorance, I can serve Hashem with acts of goodness in Hashem’s name. I can honor even the possibility of Hashem’s existence with my prayers and worship and life. I can follow the Christian spiritual tradition with its story of death and redemption, but not arrogantly, as if I have found the key to unlock the reality of Hashem. Instead I must follow the Christian path humbly and broken, for it is the only path I know.
Always there will be breaking and disillusionment. Always I will be building, and never will I achieve understanding.
And so I build and tear down. That’s all I know.
Tomorrow I will tell you the story of a time when I was terribly disillusioned. My way of honoring God was broken like the stones of a sacred city and scattered across the plains.
I will tell you this story because on the spiritual journey, disillusionment is as important as enlightenment.
rlp