Spirituality/General: Choosing A Path

These days it’s not uncommon to hear from those who practice alternative spirituality that we must choose our own spiritual path. In the New Age, we are offered a smorgasbord of spiritual systems that includes shamanism, Neo-Paganism, Buddhism, Yoga, Hermetics, Sufism, mystical Christianity and more. Further complicating matters is the fact that within each of these divisions are subdivisions. Buddhism offers the choices of Tibetan style, Zen, Theraveda and more. Within the sphere of NeoPaganism you can choose between Celtic, Nordic, Grecian, Roman and others. Shamanism includes practices of the various Native American nations, the South American Indians, Siberians, Australian aborigines and so on. Things would be much easier if we could just go back to the days when there was only “one true religion.”

Article Continues After Illustration

Choosing a spiritual is much like choosing a hiking or jogging path.Choose a path that is suited to your unique needs and abilities.

Choosing one’s path isn’t an easy task. Unfortunately, many New Agers take about as much trouble picking their brand of spirituality as they do deciding what clothes to wear. In other words, spirituality is too often based on availability, comfort and ease. Not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with this. Certainly, a beneficial spiritual path must be readily available, for it does no good to follow the path of the Siberian shaman when there’s no one around to act as teacher. Likewise, you should be comfortable with your practice – which should fit you, your personality and your needs. Also, there should be a degree of ease to your practice. A system that is too difficult will only bring discouragement.

But choosing a path on availability, comfort and ease alone can be a slippery slope. Too often, a person might choose to become a NeoPagan or practice devotional Yoga simply because some of his/her friends have become Pagans or have begun to practice Yoga. By the same token, many times a person will choose a path because it’s easy, requires no work and is devoid of pain or suffering, choosing a path that will allow life to go on in the same old manner, without creating any meaningful changes in lifestyle or attitude. Take it from someone who knows – if your spiritual path doesn’t require daily hard work or force you to make an honest assessment of your emotional issues, then there’s something basic you’re not understanding about your spiritual practice.

Taking the easiest road is not a new concept, and it’s not confined to the New Age. There’s hardly a church in the country without its “church ladies,” members who proclaim themselves to be more-pious-than-thou while holding-on to their avarice, jealousy, pride, ignorance and anger – the five Buddhist poisons which are recognized as human failings in all of the world’s religions.

In the book Wonders of the Natural Mind, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, a lama in the Bon tradition of Tibet, talks about the importance of using wisdom when choosing a spiritual path. “Before we decide to follow a path of spiritual teaching,” he says, “...it is necessary to investigate our motivation for doing so. The main reason we become interested in following a teaching is not because we have nothing else to do, or because we need to keep busy, but because we want something different in our lives from what we see around us. When we discover the way ‘normal’ people (who find nothing important in their existence) live, and when we see that the activities with which we have become accustomed to filling our lives do not solve the problem of the suffering that our existence in the cycle of samsara (suffering) brings us, we realize we have to do something different from our everyday life.”

To put it another way: any worthwhile spiritual practice should cause you to make deep and profound changes in your life. An alcoholic doesn’t recover merely from going to AA meetings and paying lip-service to the 12 Step program, but must actually spend time and considerable effort working each step. The same is true of any disease of spirit. A spiritual malaise cannot be healed by something so simple as observing eight yearly “holy days” or by sitting in meditation whenever you feel up to it. There’s good reason why Buddhist monks are up every morning at 4 a.m. to meditate or why the Pagans of old required years of training before one could be elevated to the rank of High Priest or Priestess.

“Most people do not try to understand these things,” Rinpoche continues, “and what lies beyond their understanding does not exist for them... We must avoid such an extreme of blindness, but neither should our spiritual quest become a kind of spiritual fantasy, a way of avoiding everyday reality.”

In the New Age there are too many Wiccan “Priestesses” who don’t understand the first thing about their religion beyond being mysterious and casting spells, just as there are numerous “experts” on Tibetan magic who gained their knowledge from reading a single book. Spiritual enlightenment never comes without drastic changes and years of immersion into your practice. When your “old” life looks nothing like your “new” life – then you have barely begun your journey on your chosen path.

©Copyright 2003 by AlternativeApproaches.com