The Comfort and Limitation of a Good Life

Suppose you have a good life….you have a nice job, a beautiful house, a loving family and you have good friends and they like you and you like yourself and you’re healthy. You have enough money to live your life. Why should you do spiritual practice?

The illusion of certainty

First of all, it’s beautiful to have a good life. There’s nothing wrong with all the above. The only thing that might be a limitation is that you grab hold of the whole ‘good life’ concept. That you don’t want things to change. It needs to stay as it is. And that's quite understandable, because it’s nice. It’s lovely. But clinging to the whole image is what makes you constricted and unfree. The illusion of certainty is what brings the trouble.

Living spontaneously

A carefully constructed ego and image can be quite convincing, it can give you a lot of self confidence which makes you feel like there is nothing to do, nothing to liberate. And maybe you do walk the spiritual path, perhaps out of curiosity. And if you do, probably your inner critic is telling you that it’s only curiosity, that there is nothing to learn or to liberate or to open up. Because the inner critic needs to keep the ego-system and image in place. So it will not doubt the whole thing. But what you may not realize is that a certain lack of freedom lies hidden in your ego system. Because everything that does not fit into that image and that does not fit into your ego-system, you need to set aside, you have to suppress, you have to ignore. So spontaneous desires or crazy stuff, insignificant actions or longings or fears or resistances, or fear of not knowing...sometimes it just creeps up but you have to ignore it, cause otherwise your whole system falls down. And that’s why you need to control everything to keep it in place and to stay understandable for yourself and for others...you have to live your image, be your ego. But there are a lot of things missed out here. Responses to life, free spontaneous vibrancy. You miss the immediacy of life.

Live up to the self created image

And you have to work hard to live up to that image, literally and figuratively. So by buying the right house, having the right job. But also acting in a way that fits within your ego and image. 

And that’s why people who are suffering a lot in life, turn to the spiritual path...they are longing for change. The whole system begins to shake and fall apart and they don't wanna stay in their old miserable story. When feelings of limitation, of stuckness or numbness arise or fear, shame, anxiety runs our life, we’ll start moving. When everything seems nice and okay, we don’t move. We just want to keep it that way.

It takes a lot of courage to turn towards the spiritual path and to explore our life. It’s quite dangerous to acknowledge that you don’t know who you are, that certain things might be meaningless or that you are actually quite tensed to keep the whole thing in place and keep yourself in place. So it takes a lot of courage, but it doesn’t mean that you have to change your whole life. You can keep up doing what you do but without the limitation of having to keep it like that, without grasping on to it. Needing to do what you do. You just do it because you like to, because you enjoy the beautiful stuff that you surround yourself with. Knowing at the same time that there’s nothing to control, nothing you can keep forever.

Are you willing to let go?

Some people will live their whole life according to the image and that’s okay. And when death comes, they may be able to face it or not. But some people have a deeper sense and question that there is more to it than this, that there is more to life. Something is missing or something is shaking a little bit. So they do enter the spiritual path, but as an outsider, as an observer. Cause, “hey I don’t have troubles, look at all those miserable souls that walk the spiritual path because they have so much suffering. I don't have suffering, so I don't need that”. And of course for people that suffer and are walking the path, there are other pitfalls. Are they willing to let go of their suffering? But for people who have an okay life and are curious what spirituality is about or have that deep voice saying: hey, is this it? Those people tend to stay on the outside; but you can't stay on the outside, you have to dive in. Willing to risk the whole image that you believed in to shake and noticing that you hold on to that image and that you are not willing to let go of that image; the same as people who are suffering are not willing to let go of their suffering. These images give you something to hold on to. It’s what you know. But in both ways, whether you suffer or have a good life, there are limitations. There is clinging to what you know. Ignoring the immediacy of life and the spontaneity of life and the not knowing of how life will unfold. John O’Donohue describes it in a beautiful way: “I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.”

The spiritual identity

So it’s beautiful if you have a good life. And it’s imaginable that you will not turn to a spiritual path, all the more because there are all kinds of ideas about spirituality. That it’s a grim duty to sit every day on a meditation cushion for example or that you have to give up the pleasures of life. And besides that the whole spiritual adventure can become a new narrative...a carefully created spiritual image added to your ‘good-life-list’. Before you know it you’ve  adopted a new spiritual identity that you can hold on to.

Richness of life

The invitation is to enter life fresh, over and over again. And on the contrary to what you might think, authentic spirituality offers the opportunity to become free and intimate with life. Fully embodied, surrendered to life’s ever changing movements. You will be able to enjoy what you have more and at the same time you’ll become free of the grasping and constricted aspect. You might be surprised how miraculous and rich life is if you approach it fresh.

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