It is easy to understand that our lives are frequently filled to overflowing with activities and responsibilities, commitments to meet and obligations to fulfill. If we had only abundance to use as a measurement for happiness, we would all be the happiest people on earth; or not.
Since abundance is not the determiner of being happy, it might be useful then to look at how abundance affects our lives. I can’t make the examination for you so I won’t even begin to call out things to jettison. I would imagine that you have read or heard at least one suggestion on how to simplify your life, and you may have even tried doing that. It would be somewhat self-righteous of me to presume to have all the answers, or to even use myself as an example.
What I am pondering this morning is how that cycle of seeking for more, acquiring things, accepting obligations to do, agreeing to be responsible for, may have also crept into our spiritual practice.
As we examine our lives, do we also include our spiritual lives in that examination? Are we as rigorous in seeking to simplify our spiritual practice, looking for areas where we may have ‘complexified’ our spirituality. It may be manifest in developing a compulsory attitude to practice, letting the joy slowly seep away to be replaced with a sense of obligation. It might be a sense of ‘not quite enough’ as if somehow we are just a few minutes shy of having spent the ‘right’ amount of time.
Or, how much of our daily need to be doing has crept into and replaced our spiritual way of being?
Perhaps if you find your practice less fulfilling you might find the solution to be less and not more.
