So often the word spiritual is used in a way that implies something other than, better than material. In the world of yoga for example, those who favour the meditation practices of raja yoga over the posture practice of hatha yoga, claim that their practice is more spiritual. However, we must be careful not to approach spirituality as if it were an academic subject. We must be careful to ensure that our investigation of our spiritual nature does not become stuck in concepts and forms of logic that arise in and belong to the abstract world of the mind. If the word spiritual refers to something that does actually exist, it may have a reality that is not dependent on our perception and conceptions of it.

In so many religious traditions there has always been a separation of the spiritual and material world. However, does this separation bear up under the direct scrutiny of our experience. For example, most of us believe that our body is one thing, our mind another. The pain of a broken toe arises in the body, that of a broken heart in the mind, we think. But is this differentiation pragmatically valid. Perhaps not. Our perception of the physical sensations of a broken toe actually arise in the mind: it is the mind that interprets the neutral sensations of the nervous system as pain. Equally the sense of loss and grief that accompany a broken heart arise as mental interpretations of physical sensation arising in the abdomen, chest and throat. So, here at least it seems that the mental and physical, spiritual and material cannot be separated.

As yogis, this should not surprise us. The very word we use to describe our practice means union, the opposite of separation. We practice in order to unify the various parts of our anatomy and physiology more harmoniously; to unify the vagrant energies and tendencies of the mind; to unite mind and body; to realise the spiritual in the material. We discover in asana practice that the body is highly intelligent. We discover in pranayama that physiology and psychology are directly linked. We discover in meditation that spirit and matter are complementary expressions of a single process, a single reality.

So, the process of meditation, dealing as it does with the realm of the mind, is not of itself more spiritual than the practice of postures, dealing with the body. Nor are its effects. Both practices involve each other. We cannot meditate without good posture. We cannot access even the most simple posture without a meditative mind. So, how is it then, that people can spend years in posture practice and still feel that there is something missing, something more that they need to cultivate. The key is in the attitude underlying our practice. In essence it is a question of ambition.

If there is ambition in our practice to become better than we are, we are at once in jeopardy. For this ambition tends to create an underlying psychological tension, based on the fact that we are not accepting what we are. This tension dulls the sensitivity of our mind. When this happens then no matter how accomplished our physical articulation of the postures, we remain unsatisfied. The strength, the energy, the confidence we glean from our practice are somehow inadequate. We know that yoga offers more than this.

This is where the true meaning of spirituality reveals itself. The inner approach to yoga and to life, that brings with it the treasured spiritual fruits of deep peace, inviolable contentment, compassion and wisdom, rests not upon constructing something better than what we are, but on simply becoming fully what we already are. It means dropping ambition, and cultivating an inner sensitivity. As this sensitivity flowers through our practice the inner tension that arose from our ambitious refusal to accept ourselves as we are begins to dissolve. We begin to relax in a very deep way: not only physically and emotionally, but also spiritually. As this relaxation deepens, and we let go of the limited aspects of our self-image derived from poorly processed past experiences, we begin to uncover the depth, the simplicity, the radiance of our inner self. This is our spiritual nature. Only by uncovering it can we be satisfied.

It is not found, however, by looking away from ourselves. It is not found by ignoring the material, denying the actual. It is discovered by penetrating the material, the physical, the actual with a sensitivity and openness that has no trace of the violence of ambition. So we must always begin where we are. For all of us this means beginning with physicality, with materialism. For this is where we find ourselves. But as we penetrate our selves we discover that our body is not separable form our mind, that matter is inseparable from spirit. Then we realise that there is no other place to which we have to turn to find ourselves. We simply have to let go of the fear that creates ambition, and relax enough to accept ourselves as we are. We have to turn to, to accept and to assimilate, the actual reality of our body, of our mind, our heart and soul. There is no need to try to better them, to change them.

The process of penetrating body and mind itself affects a transformation. The energy of open attention is itself transforming, healing. Our sense of unease, our feeling that there is something better somewhere else, arise to a great extent from the stagnation that results from inner tension. Tension of body and mind, that arise from our tendency to avoid directly experiencing so much of our lives, creates a resistance to the flow and change that is intrinsic to life. If we let go of this tension, then the energy of life can flow again, and in that renewed momentum there is inevitably change, transformation, healing. The beauty, and the subtlety, of it is that to release tension we simply have to encounter it fully. We have to feel it, engage it with no resistance, and it releases. The energy that was then being held is free to flow as change.

There is one thing that endangers this penetration of body and mind more than anything else. It is the tendency to conceptualise our life before directly experiencing it. We must be careful that we approach our investigation of body and mind with more than just our analytical, conceptual mind. While that aspect of our intelligence has its place in the process, it must be balanced. We must learn to access a quality of attention that goes far beyond the conceptual process. This quality of attention depends upon a coalescence of all of the energies of the mind. It involves allowing the whole of our attention to bear on the activity at hand. So, we must learn to release our attention fully from its fascination with information, analysis and knowledge. We have to relinquish the habitual separation of ourselves from the experiences in which we participate, whereby we look for contorl over them. We have to become one, to unite, with our experience. We must cultivate yoga, as a process of unification.

As long as some of our attention, some of our psychological energy, is either elsewhere or else externally watching the process of our practice we cannot know yoga. Even noting how hard a posture is or how well we are doing it is to separate part of ourselves from our activity, and to lose the fullness of the experience in our conceptualising. When there is undiluted unification of the energies of mind and body, in our activity, whether it be asana, pranayama or taking a shower, then there is yoga. Then we have the quality of attention necessary to penetrate our body and mind, to illuminate our lives. Then we find, through this open and yet focussed attention that the peace, joy and understanding we seek, belong intrinsically to our mind when it is unified. That all of our dissatisfaction arose not from the fact that something was missing, but that we had too much tension to experience fully what we have, what we are.

So, the spiritual path is not one away from the mundane realm of body, emotion, thought, to some rarified higher plane where such banalities are transcended. It is the opposite. It is a penetration of the mundane reality of our life and self-image. It is opening to, accepting fully, the actuality of our experience of ourself. Through that opening transformation arises: stagnation becomes change, resistance becomes energy, confusion becomes clarity, tension becomes strength, anxiety becomes peace.

The spiritual path is not a special direction, or an esoteric technique. It is an attitude of passion (tapas) for what is. The essence of that attitude is acceptance (samtosa). We embark on the spiritual path through learning to accept reality, that of ourselves and that of others. But this acceptance is not complacent, it is not a blind unthinking process. It is one that is rooted in clear attention, in mindfulness, in sensitivity (ahimsa) to the subtle and hidden aspects of situations that we find ourselves in. This acceptance soon becomes something more positive, it becomes a joy, peace and compassion. When they begin to arise not because we have grafted an image of them onto the confusion of our mind and tension of our body, but because that confusion and tension are dissolving through the release of clear and open awareness, then we know that there is nowhere to go, nothing extra we must acquire or learn. We know that the kingdom of heaven is indeed to be found within us.

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