Never before has the practice of the world’s various contemplative and healing arts – yoga, meditation, ayurveda, Sufism, tai-chi, etc. – been so widespread. And while this proliferation has undoubtedly helped thousands live a more profound, robust life, this unparalleled distribution also means that never before has there been so much widespread confusion regarding these arts as well. And this is a dangerous thing. Because the adoption of specific practices and prescribed rituals does not necessarily translate into living a more connected, involved life. In fact, the assumption that certain practices can lead to a higher state of being often disconnects us further from the deeper aspects of the self that we are supposedly seeking. Cloaking some of us behind an even thicker veil of ignorance than we started with.

Consider, as an example, the notion of being on a ‘spiritual path’. There are those of us who believe we can somehow involve ourselves in practices and rituals that will automatically transport us to higher states of being that are somehow more ‘spiritual’ and evolved than other states of being. But this is utterly nonsensical. The contemplative practices themselves do not necessarily lead anywhere. The practices and rituals are not transporters or transformers that can automatically bring about prescribed changes just by repeating particular mantras, exercises, or dietary restrictions. Rather, the practices are more like revealers. They are instruments of amplification, instruments to reveal and magnify who we already are. The practices and rituals were designed to teach us about ourselves, about our energy and nature, about our behavior and potential, about the consequences of our actions. But it is left to individual practitioners to observe these things and modify and/or adjust our behaviors in response to what we uncover. It is not the mechanical and/or theoretical quality of a particular practice that is important. It is the quality of the individual engaged in that practice that determines its value, direction, and worth. The practices in and of themselves have no value until the energy of an individual practitioner engages and animates them. That is what determines their course.

In fact, if we believe we are on a ‘spiritual path’, this belief can often hamper our maturity and clarity of mind. We are in danger of becoming blind to the actual consequences of our thoughts, beliefs, and actions. We can become prey to a kind of ‘spiritual arrogance’. If I, as a yoga practitioner or meditator or ayurvedic doctor, truly believe that my practices automatically put me on a higher, more evolved path, then I might stop paying attention to my actual self. As I truly exist. I might begin to see and identify myself as some idealized projection of what I believe someone on a ‘spiritual path’ should be. I might start to rationalize my behaviors and actual actions with delusional notions and excuses, defending what I think and do as necessarily ‘good’ and ‘evolved’ simply because of my supposition of being on a ‘spiritual path’. And I will become blind to the truth about myself that the contemplative practices were trying to reveal to me in the first place.

The truth of the matter is, there are no spiritual paths. And there is no such thing as spiritual evolution. All of the healing arts to which so many people prescribe teach this basic concept. They regard and reference the spirit as an entity not bound by space or time. And yet many practitioners see themselves involved in a field and a pursuit of ‘spiritual evolution’, where different practices are utilized like rungs on a ladder to climb from one ‘lower’ fixed point to another ‘higher’, more evolved fixed point. But how can a spirit be on a path, or at a fixed point moving toward another fixed point when this notion is dependent on the element of space? How can a spirit be involved in a process of evolution when evolution implies the element of time? Which, like space, is not a realm to which the spirit is attached, nor limited.

This is not an exercise in semantics or word-play. Recognizing that there are no ‘spiritual’ paths leading to some stylized ‘higher’ state of ‘spiritual evolution’ is of fundamental importance in seeing clearly the reality of a human life. Recognizing that a plumber living a normal life with a normal house and normal kids has as much ready access to the deeper parts of the self, and the so-called spiritual realms, as does a yoga or Sufi practitioner is a fundamental truth that must be reconciled by those interested in looking deeply into the nature of things. We are who we are. And pledging allegiance to one school of thought, and not another, does nothing to change our fundamental nature. The healing arts were not designed to be ‘systems’ through which we define ourselves by the adoption of some set of rote practices. They were designed to help us understand who we actually are; not reinforce some notion of who we want or think we should be.

To be clear, there is obviously something that can evolve and mature through these healing practices. There is great potential for growth through these arts. We are not the same person as we were 10 years ago, and through diligence of attention and awareness, certain aspects of the self and the body can undergo a kind of transformation through persistence and honest practice. But this has nothing to do with what we call the ‘spirit’ per se. The world’s contemplative arts are all clear that our ‘spirits’ (or whatever word you want to give to that base causal resonant energy behind the creation of our individual selves) are not in need of transformation. That ‘spiritual’, illuminative aspect of the self is untarnished and pure. It burns brightly and consistently, and it is available in its unblemished state at all times. So what gets principally transformed through the healing arts is our experience of life, our experience of the ‘spirit’ and the illuminative resonant energies that animate our biology.

And the transformation that allows for our change in experience ultimately takes place in the mind. The healing arts ultimately and eventually deal with the workings of the mind. Showing how the confusion and pain of the mind strain and distort our experience of life and our ‘spirit’. The mind is susceptible to the modifications of time and space. It is an instrument that is readily distracted by physical illness and disease. It is an instrument that corrupts, charms, beguiles, reduces and modifies reality in the form of thoughts, desires, wants, aversions and demands. And though the mind has the potential to change, though it can tread a path and cultivate a quality of attention in practice to help clear the way toward having a more direct perception and experience of life, it is usually in the way of our clarity. It is usually distracted, preoccupied, and pulling us away from direct experience and perception.

The mind first distorts reality by identifying itself as an individual entity somehow separate from the rest of creation. Ignoring the fact that its molecules are simply threads woven into a more complex, intricate web of creation, it assumes an individual personality, and this persona begins to swell and bloat. It starts to identify itself and its limited capacities as the primary ground root and parameter of all existence. It develops habits and preferences. It creates a world-view, then starts to skew, block, and bend reality through a kind of self-supporting prism that works to refract and reframe things in a way that is soothing and nurturing to whatever chosen sense of self it has created. An unwatched mind will translate and interpret life and reality in accordance with its own particular self-serving whims and moods, which often have very little to do with the truth of what we’re actually feeling and experiencing. And caught in the endless whirlpool of thoughts, drama and invented needs, the mind keeps us from experiencing the full weight of reality, as it truly is, by reducing it into this and that. Our direct experience of the light of the ‘spirit’ that is most connected to the deeper aspects of reality is blocked and eclipsed by our thinking faculties and habits of thought.

What the contemplative practices ultimately offer and present is an ideal environment to uncover and observe the scheming tendencies of the mind. The healing arts are a chance to watch, in a controlled environment, the whole dance between the mind, the body, the breath, the connection between physical health and emotional stability, the connection between our emotional stability and our actions, the connection between our actions and their consequences, and finally the connection between those consequences and how they shape our experience of life and reality. If the awareness and opportunity for reflection are cultivated and sharpened in the contemplative practices, we can start to see and recognize the fundamental ignorance and suffering that arise when an unwatched mind is left free to translate and interpret life and reality in accordance with its own particular whims and moods. We start to recognize how this instrument designed to gather information and be of service in the experience of life starts to identify itself as the ground root of all existence. We start to see clearly how unclearly we see. Which is, of course, the first step in the maturation of our clarity.

The mind, of course, has very little interest in being told that it is the root of suffering, and the cause of living a limited life. The mind wants to be in charge and all-knowing. It wants to be the base of reality upon which all other phenomena are dependent. And as such, it takes over the governance of our entire experience. Including our adventure into the so-called ‘spiritual’ practices, where it shapes and twists and corrupts our experience of reality with concepts that fit its pre-existing notions and acceptable variances of what, for it, can be true. Further entrenching us in the rut of its self-serving ignorance, and self-congratulatory notions of ‘spirituality’, ‘evolution’, and ‘progress’. And nowhere is the mind’s hijacking of the truth more evident than in our modern conception, practice, and use of the word ‘meditation’.

The phrase ‘I meditate’ is thrown about in modern ‘spiritual’ circles. I meditate in the morning. I meditate twice a day. I meditate for peace of mind. I meditate to still the fluctuations of the mind. These are all widespread, and wholly nonsensical statements. They are fundamental, irreconcilable concepts invented and assigned fancy language by the mind. Meditation, after all, is a state of being. Meditation is not a verb, or something that can be done or practiced by an ‘I”. All traditions in the world define the state of meditation as some kind of supreme belonging. Where notions or feelings of separation in the threads of the Universe do not exist. Where individual thoughts, modifications, and references of the personal mind cease to manifest. Where a state of being and grace is experienced beyond the limits of the individual self. Where words, ultimately and necessarily, fail. Because any reduction of the experience of meditation into thoughts, or into the ground of individual experience, cannot, by definition, be the state itself.

And yet there the mind is. Taking ownership of the very state that would otherwise render it useless. Sneaking through an unmanned door somewhere in the consciousness, latching on to some specific detail of the meditation experience, lacing it with words, descriptions, concepts, methodology and dogma in order to ground us back into an individualized state of existence where it can re-exact its dominion over the individual self. And then invent absurd concepts like ‘I meditate’. Or ‘I belong to this or that school of spiritual practice’. Who is this ‘I’ we are speaking of? Is this notion of ‘I’ not the very fundamental ground concept of separation that breaks the state of meditation and spiritual belonging in the first place? Is this ‘I’ not the very root of all other modifications, since it now becomes the reference against which reality will now be compared and rendered? Is not this ‘I’ the very filter through which the pure light of the spirit (truth, Universe, God) will be bent, corrupted, and reshaped; scattering our consciousness like a prism?

To be very, very clear, sitting silently in a corner on a cushion quietly watching and observing the self and reality can be an incredibly valuable practice. But it is not necessarily a ‘spiritual’ practice, it is not necessarily meditation, and it is not necessarily valuable. As with any of the contemplative and healing practices – asana, chanting, ritual diets, alchemy, etc. – the results of sitting depend upon the quality of the individual doing the sitting, the quality of intention behind that sitting, and the maturity of the observing mind participating in the sitting. All of the contemplative practices are revealing arts. They were designed to help us see who we already and truly are, to see what our potential is, to see how our behaviors and thoughts affect ourselves and others, to find out the truth of our feelings, to observe our role and connection to the larger reality of which we find ourselves a single part. They were not developed to reconfigure us into some idealized version of a more ‘enlightened’ self through some series of rote practices, chants, or rituals. They were not designed to reshape us into some romanticized higher, more ‘spiritual’ self as defined and invented by the whims and random allegiances of the mind.

We are all spiritual beings having a human experience. And to suggest that one of us is on a higher spiritual path than another is not only presumptuous, it is debilitating to our own growth. For all of us are animated by a light from the same source. We find ourselves manifest as individual human beings, who are for the moment separate, at least in our experience, from the deepest, most connected reality. Part of this human experience is a mind. And while this mind is capable of an infinite number of incredible and creatively magnificent things, it is ultimately limited in a way the spirit is not. All the world’s contemplative arts teach us that the mind is an instrument, and it is only a part of the whole. And as such, though it wants to understand and ground all phenomena through its own mechanics, it cannot. And with enough time sitting, honestly observing, and actively exploring ourselves through these various arts, we come to see that life is not something to be understood. It is simply there to be lived. And celebrated.