How do we find the ground to stand when things fall apart around us? Through our spiritual practice, we develop a sense of being grounded. This foundation supports us when life begins to fall apart. In this video, I share my experience of maintaining an interior life rooted in spiritual practice as a foundation for resilience during a time of transition.
The following is a text version of this posting.
In the 1990s, I was asked to consider working on one of the Native American reservations in the Dakotas. I spoke with several people who lived there. One of the questions I asked was about life on the Northern prairie during the winter. The Lakota people I spoke with explained that an important part of the culture is maintaining life in the winter months when the weather is severe by staying indoors, telling stories, making traditional crafts and art, and being more reflective. The summer months had a different rhythm but the winter was an interior time.
That balance of an interior life along with an exterior, more outwardly engaged life is important for our overall well-being.
In a previous video, I spoke about Spirituality and things falling apart. I concluded that video by saying that there are three elements that I find to be important for living well that enable us to navigate times in life with things fall apart. One is maintaining an awareness that things in life always change. Another is to recognize the importance of having others in our lives for support. But there’s also the development of an interior life. That’s what I want to talk about today: the interior life.
When I talk about the interior life, I’m referring to what’s going on inside of us. Words like heart and soul come to mind for me in terms of the interior life. Of course, nurturing our interior life is related to spiritual practice, meditation, and prayer. But it’s important to think more broadly in terms of the things that nurture our spirits: music, art, and nature … and the things that touch us deeply.
When things fall apart in our lives, it’s not helpful to suddenly try to become an expert meditator. Instead, when we maintain a spiritual practice – get it, a practice – then we’re ready for when things fall apart. Practicing something gets us ready for when we really need it. Similarly, if we develop interior depth over time, a greater wealth interiorly, then we’re able to draw on that wealth in ways that sustain us.
What are the resources we draw on from an interior life when things fall apart? One is a sense of peace amid moments of chaos. We find that we have the ability to focus our inner spirit even when storms in life come at us. For example, if we’ve trained ourselves to breath in meditation, then becoming aware of our breadth in difficult moments can help to restore balance.
Another resource we develop from an interior life is the ability to focus. When things fall apart, there’s a great deal of distraction. Those distractions include our emotions, the responses of others, as well as people who mean well and attempt to tell us what to do. A person who has developed the interior life, through spiritual practice, art, music, or nature knows how to step back and focus in a way that will help sort out a path forward.
I benefit of the interior life that I find to be very helpful is perspective. When we have allowed ourselves to be more deeply rooted in life, we’re better able to get a sense that my reality, my immediate experience, though important, isn’t all there is in life. We gain a perspective of not taking ourselves too seriously.
I want to be clear that just because we’ve developed an interior life doesn’t mean that we don’t get rattled and panicked when things fall apart. But it does mean that we have the inner resources to draw on to help make it through. Often, we need to remind ourselves to use those resources. For example, while we may know that we experience deep peace from our spiritual practice, we may need to be reminded to pause and just breathe deeply to experience a greater level of peace. That’s because when things fall apart, we’re overwhelmed. But in the middle of being overwhelmed, when we pull back a bit and gain a little perspective, we’ll find that we have something rich within us that enables us to respond when things fall apart.
It’s important to engage regularly in doing things that develop your interior life. The time to begin is now so that when things fall apart, you’re ready. It’s just like having a fire extinguisher in the kitchen. The time to buy one is before the fire so that you have it when you need it.
