Once, Brother Weeps began a teaching this way:

I received a letter the other day and my pen friend asked: “What is the purpose of spiritual practices?” So, I wrote back. This is what I told her.

There are a few basic things most, if not all, authentic spiritual practices are meant to do:

~ First, they are meant to wake us up, to insure that we don’t sleep walk through our days on this earth. It’s a far greater condition than we might think.

~ Second, if we already are awake, a spiritual practice is meant
to reveal, sensitize us, or keep us awake to what matters most. That is, though not sleep walking through life, how to avoid what is equally hazardous to our well-being, namely, giving ourselves to the wrong thing or things.

~ Third, they are meant to cultivate mindfulness or attentive, loving presence. To give ourselves to the hic, the haec, and the nunc — the this, the here, and the now.

~ Fourth, spiritual practices are meant to foster self-forgetfulness. This is rather counter-cultural in today’s society that seems to foment self-absorption. It is interesting to note, for example, that whether during meditation, dance, acts of charity, or planting trees, it is when we are the least self-conscious that we are the most truly ourselves, and

~ Fifth, they are meant to help us cultivate a greater desire and capacity to love, and so to spread blessing wherever we tread on this earth.

~ Dan Miller, © 2021 All Rights Reserved.

NOTE: a practice might be something that is overtly spiritual like contemplative prayer, chant, lectio divina (prayerfully pondering a sacred text), walking meditation, walking a labyrinth OR it might simply be doing something we love or enjoy but bringing a conscious sense of contemplative prayerful presence to it like gardening, cooking, sitting in nature and gazing and listening, journaling, writing poetry, visiting someone, writing a note or letter expressing appreciation or gratitude, volunteering.

NOTE WELL! It is not a collection of private practices and exercises that makes us spiritual. It is a vibrant and substantive spiritual life that gives meaning to our practices.

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