Spiritual Practice: Mental Phenomena and its relation to the Physical

When undertaking any spiritual venture, it's common to frame it in the context of an effort-to-benefit ratio. "What can I seek to gain through the practice of this discipline or that?" Many think that benefits only occur after years and years of consistency or think it's all bull shit to control the masses. Both are valid points. However, all of them have a common deficiency that commonly gets overlooked.

They simply aren't being aware enough of what IS happening. It's a catch-22 for we are trying to build awareness, but to do that, we need to be more aware. Yet the whole reason we are doing it is because we aren't! See the conundrum? This is why goal striving in spirituality, while initially helpful and grounding, ultimately goes nowhere. Doing it for some perceived benefit only takes you so far. What happens when you stop seeing them? You stop doing it and move to the next thing.

Mentally you are confronting paradox, which by it's nature makes it non intuitive, non linear, and such a complex bitch of a task that nobody would blame you for quitting. Our minds get emotional and frustrated when we can't solve a problem, especially personal ones. This is where faith or persistence comes in and helps us navigate the

mental/emotional into more abstruse, cryptic, and esoteric territory with less headache. Understanding this process is an uphill battle. Many have tried and failed at it throughout history. So instead of focusing solely on mental awareness, we shift to PHYSICAL awareness.

You may be saying, "Aren't we trying to transcend the physical?" and you're right. But most of us who begin any religious, spiritual, or occultic practices want to jump right to the end and acheive 'the goal' because it makes us feel special, important, gifted, fill in the blank. This ambition completely undermines any spiritual progress we might have had because it ignores entirely the foundation: Our body.

Most of us breathe improperly, have terrible posture, don't exercise, eat foods that literally destroy our health, yet we think that this is an adequate basis for the development of lazer like focused awareness. Anyone in their right mind would do everything in their power to distract themselves from such terrible conditions, and we do. Watching TV, scrolling social media, binge watching Youtube videos. The point is, we distract ourselves from distraction with distraction as T.S Eliot succinctly put it.

It's tough though, because many of us aren't even aware of how much pain we are in. How much we have dissociated from reality. "Am I unaware because of my pain or in pain because I'm unaware?" That paradox comes back at us again! The chicken and the egg. This is the reason why grounding practices such as yoga, rhythmic breathing, meditation techniques (that are less contemplative) are essential to spiritual longevity and development. It's because it gets us out of our heads where we compulsively interact with the same mental constructs over and over again, like a strung out drug addict.

When we become aware of just how much we fixate on mental conceptions and learn to put them down, this is the first step toward a more wholistic, physically integrative, and balanced state of spirit.