The essence of spiritual life consists in our resolve to attain union with God. It is a movement of the spirit as the result of a deep desire implanted in the recesses of our hearts. Unlike any other skill in life, developed through a scientific outlook, spiritual life may be seen as an art. Yet again, it is not like any other art as spiritual life involves the total life of a person. It should be a force permeating through and through everyone of our actions. To achieve this, one has to start with one's thoughts where the importance of calm reflection and meditation cannot be overemphasized. Since our speech and actions ultimately proceed from our thoughts, our behavior as a whole will show forth the unction of the spirit within us. A work of art is a piece of self-expression manifested in the object of art created by the artist. Spiritual life as a work of art produces its object in the artist himself or herself and this is the distinguishing mark of this art from all others. The end product of spiritual life as an art is a transformed, new person of the very artist.
On a day to day practical level, the movement of the spirit is manifested in the search for our well-being and happiness. That this can be achieved permanently only in our union with God, Who is mysteriously present in us and also transcends us, is a spiritual insight. Our search should be directed to sharpen this insight by learning to look in the right places and asking the right questions. Jesus asked us to search for the Kingdom of God and His righteousness above all else whereby we shall receive everything we need (Matthew, 6:33). If our search is right, we shall see that we are under the spell of our desires governed by the task-master 'Ego' dictating terms for our so-called well-being and happiness. This helps our false self to be developed at the expense of our true self that is God's own image. Searching for truth means that we are willing to see things as they are as against our wish how they should be. This is called 'cognition' as against 'recognition' that is a mere validation of things we already know and like. Cognition is real knowledge leading to wisdom that is able to guide our life in search for truth.
The universal feeling of inadequacy among people in general and people of religion in particular about our inability to harmonize the spiritual practices and the secular duties we are called to perform in our daily lives is a fact of life. It may be expressed by saying that the sacred and the secular aspects of our life do not seem to be natural allies to the point that we have to make conscious efforts to align them in an acceptable manner. We may define the sacred as what belongs to the other world with its shadow casting on this world and the secular as what belongs to this world casting its shadow on the next world. A smooth interaction between the two enriching our lives is a perennial problem cropping up now and again to the detriment of our spiritual life. In recent times, the Catholic Church has initiated programs and projects in many of its parishes to overcome this problem in order to bring the faithful to an understanding of a really meaningful and thriving spiritual life. Although these attempts are praiseworthy, they suffer from a basic flow originating from very early times of the division of the sacred and the secular in such a way that the outcome of such attempts cannot but stand out as testimony to some kind of a patchwork.It is true that a patchwork serves the purpose of joining the divided parts as a temporary measure until a completely new item can be procured, which in our case is going back to the original way of life. This life exemplified in the life of Jesus Christ and his disciples will easily show us the unity and coherence of the sacred and the secular that should be adopted by the Church for a complete renewal of its spiritual life.
We hope to show in this brief Study how we can get back to the kind of spiritual life leading us to the full potentiality of our human capabilities making us whole before God and men and women just as Jesus grew up in wisdom in his earthly life (Luke, 2: 52). We believe that the way shown by his first disciples and Apostles is without prejudice to the practices of any religion so much so that any member of the human family irrespective of religion, caste, class, gender, ideologies and persuasions may fruitfully adopt it for their own true self-development. The reason for this belief is that the way of Jesus is completely spiritual without denying the importance of the body and the externals provided they are subsumed under the power of the Spirit. This kind of subordination of the body to the Spirit does not deprive the former of its potentialities as the latter does not negate the legitimate needs of the body and its external extensions, but rather enhances them by genuinely empowering them. For this activity of the Spirit, what is required is to follow the spiritual rules emanating from the Spirit Himself more than the strict adherence to the routine rituals of religions devoid of the inner unction of the Spirit. We shall discuss these rules in our Posts under the title: Family Life. (To be Cont'd).
On a day to day practical level, the movement of the spirit is manifested in the search for our well-being and happiness. That this can be achieved permanently only in our union with God, Who is mysteriously present in us and also transcends us, is a spiritual insight. Our search should be directed to sharpen this insight by learning to look in the right places and asking the right questions. Jesus asked us to search for the Kingdom of God and His righteousness above all else whereby we shall receive everything we need (Matthew, 6:33). If our search is right, we shall see that we are under the spell of our desires governed by the task-master 'Ego' dictating terms for our so-called well-being and happiness. This helps our false self to be developed at the expense of our true self that is God's own image. Searching for truth means that we are willing to see things as they are as against our wish how they should be. This is called 'cognition' as against 'recognition' that is a mere validation of things we already know and like. Cognition is real knowledge leading to wisdom that is able to guide our life in search for truth.
The universal feeling of inadequacy among people in general and people of religion in particular about our inability to harmonize the spiritual practices and the secular duties we are called to perform in our daily lives is a fact of life. It may be expressed by saying that the sacred and the secular aspects of our life do not seem to be natural allies to the point that we have to make conscious efforts to align them in an acceptable manner. We may define the sacred as what belongs to the other world with its shadow casting on this world and the secular as what belongs to this world casting its shadow on the next world. A smooth interaction between the two enriching our lives is a perennial problem cropping up now and again to the detriment of our spiritual life. In recent times, the Catholic Church has initiated programs and projects in many of its parishes to overcome this problem in order to bring the faithful to an understanding of a really meaningful and thriving spiritual life. Although these attempts are praiseworthy, they suffer from a basic flow originating from very early times of the division of the sacred and the secular in such a way that the outcome of such attempts cannot but stand out as testimony to some kind of a patchwork.It is true that a patchwork serves the purpose of joining the divided parts as a temporary measure until a completely new item can be procured, which in our case is going back to the original way of life. This life exemplified in the life of Jesus Christ and his disciples will easily show us the unity and coherence of the sacred and the secular that should be adopted by the Church for a complete renewal of its spiritual life.
We hope to show in this brief Study how we can get back to the kind of spiritual life leading us to the full potentiality of our human capabilities making us whole before God and men and women just as Jesus grew up in wisdom in his earthly life (Luke, 2: 52). We believe that the way shown by his first disciples and Apostles is without prejudice to the practices of any religion so much so that any member of the human family irrespective of religion, caste, class, gender, ideologies and persuasions may fruitfully adopt it for their own true self-development. The reason for this belief is that the way of Jesus is completely spiritual without denying the importance of the body and the externals provided they are subsumed under the power of the Spirit. This kind of subordination of the body to the Spirit does not deprive the former of its potentialities as the latter does not negate the legitimate needs of the body and its external extensions, but rather enhances them by genuinely empowering them. For this activity of the Spirit, what is required is to follow the spiritual rules emanating from the Spirit Himself more than the strict adherence to the routine rituals of religions devoid of the inner unction of the Spirit. We shall discuss these rules in our Posts under the title: Family Life. (To be Cont'd).
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