Living a deeper life. Part 7

Living a deeper life

Part 7: Take a chance on what God might say next

So, peace of mind is the first foundation of living a deeper life, and this depends on spiritual integrity, in terms of being true to what we believe. I think that this is what fuels deeper awareness. As we reduce our inner turmoil, our inner conflict, then we are more able, more free, to become aware of what is happening in our lives.

If we can then tame our ego, this will be another giant stride forward. I think the key to taming the ego is to be secure in ourselves. If we have a fragile ego, we will be vulnerable, and susceptible to falling into faults. This is bound to damage our peace, firstly because we are aware that we have caused others harm, then because we realise we have broken our own integrity, and then that produces feelings like guilt and shame. However, if I don’t need to boost my ego because I already feel blessed in the love of God, then I can ignore my vanity, the desire to look good or put one over on others – these things are just not necessary. If I feel secure, I don’t need to be so hurt when others try to put me down, or dump their negative emotions on me – which may well be the product of their own unhappiness. If I can manage to step aside from the constant striving to establish ourselves in the pecking order – a desire that evolution has planted deep inside us – then I am free to be aware of my surroundings, aware of other people, and to become sensitive to their needs. If I can apply a fraction of the love that God has shown me, then I am free to respond to my situation with the aim of loving others rather than asserting my own needs. And I think that all of this is part of what it means to live a deeper life.

We have freed ourselves from the natural concerns of life to pay attention to the spiritual concerns of life – and we are aiming, by continual effort in living the life of faith, to make attention to spiritual concerns our natural way of being.

There is the huge question: “If I was not continually dwelling on my habitual concerns, developed over a lifetime of focus on my personal needs – as developed in the ordinary course of natural life – what else might God prompt me to do? The honest answer to this is: “I don’t know”. I don’t know because I have never really given him a chance. Of course, as a religious person, and someone apparently naturally attuned to the spiritual life, I have made some efforts and made some progress. However, I cannot say that I have ever fully committed to seeing what might happen if I gave myself completely to a spiritual way of life, rather than a natural way of life with useful support from God. So, a substantial part of my consideration of living a deeper life is that I will have to wait and see what happens if I try harder. Yet we have been exploring what this new life might be, and this is still useful to encourage us to try to live a different sort of life, and see that there is much to gain. We seem to be saying that we need to make more space in our lives in which God might speak to us. If we trust what he says, and do our best to act on it, then we should progressively grow into a deeper way of life.