As a healthy 46-year-old the question occasionally arises, why the constant focus on spiritual development? This usually is expressed along the lines of, “Life is generally good so why not just focus on the good stuff and avoid the bad.” Who has the time anyway?

It’s a good question. Why not simply immerse oneself in this life, be the best person one can be, bring a smile to others, raise one’s kids, coach baseball, work hard, mow the lawn and aim for an exotic vacation or two along the way? What’s so all-important about this unknown spiritual realm when we’re stuck here in the material one?

The answer seems to be: It depends. For me spirituality became a path out of suffering. At some point I started to recognize that the usual antidotes to my suffering were no longer working. I was akin to the alcoholic needing more and more of the stuff to mute the pain – at some point you drink yourself to death because it’s never enough. So as I’ve previously noted, the suffering to me became something of a blessing because it at last awakened me to the illusion in which I was living.

For others it’s not so easy a call. Life is reasonably good, there aren’t any (or many) skeletons in the closet, the fears and anxieties are more garden variety stuff, and materially they’re doing ok. Nobody has died or is dying, there’s food in the belly and a flat panel television or two on the walls. So why invest in the unseen when the existing picture isn’t so bad? To that I have no immediate answer.

“Our soul appears when we make room for it.”
Thomas Moore

Life being life, however, these individuals eventually will encounter suffering and when they do my experience has been that they’re often the least capable of handling the pain. They’ve lived in such rigid attachment to the world around them that when it inevitably ends, as it must, they often are totally devastated. Perhaps the spouse with whom they are completely co-dependent suddenly is removed from the scene or a lump is found and their own mortality comes knocking. Whatever the case, their world is shattered and because it’s all they’ve ever known or leaned upon they’ve no where to turn.

So perhaps a spiritual commitment is nothing more than an acknowledgement of life’s impermanence, a recognition that at some point all of it – including these bodies we call “us” – will come to an end. Rather than wait until a crisis is fully upon us we can start the journey within now. Rather than cry out to God over the body of a sickened child or as we ourselves lie in the hospice, we might begin the conversation. Or in the words of the incomparable Kahlil Gibran, “You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.”

Some might argue that in this instance spirituality is being used as a kind of insurance policy, as a crutch against existing or future pain. Maybe. But I think if we are honest most of us are in fact already in a constant state of low-grade suffering. We tamp it down, pretend it isn’t there, keep the calendar choked with activities, the music on, the alcohol or drugs flowing. We know that no matter how good the good gets, something is missing, something isn’t quite right. Most of us, in fact, have experienced a high point in life only to awaken the next day thinking, “That was great. Now what?” It is the “what” that encourages the search for something more, the search within.

So to the question of why the perseverance with the spiritual, my answer is: Because I know this life, this body, this universe is an illusion. So why not incorporate God (or spirituality, or whatever term you want) into the daily mix? Why not take time throughout each and every day to contemplate the unseen so that when this life of ours takes a turn for the “worse” we aren’t toppled by it? With dedication, perhaps the unseen will make itself known.