I visited the Adoration chapel to pray yesterday and, partway through my prayer, I pulled out my notebook. These are the words that supplied themselves there.
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“The totality of being” – what do I mean by that?
The totality of being – a human, a daughter, a friend? The totality of being a lonely individual who tries to make good choices with imperfect information? The totality of being a young woman whose heart aches with a desire that is yet to be fulfilled?
What does it mean to contain multitudes? To encompass infinity? How do you construe the nature of the soul? How do you satisfy the questions of existence that burn inside a curious mind?
There are always intangibles – things that we would call “abstract.” But to dismiss them as mere unrealities – fancies of the overactive mind – is to discredit their very real importance in our lives.
It’s tempting to walk through life batting away the harder questions – the ones whose answers don’t immediately (or, in some cases, ever) materialize. But if we live this way, we are denying ourselves the opportunity to plumb the depths and examine the heights. To be a human being who is fully alive requires engaging our spiritual senses alongside our material ones, with the object of participating in the events of our lives with alertness, sensitivity, and grace.
It might be scary to consider how much of our selves we have been locking away – how much of our instinct to Live we have frozen, in the hopes that we might escape some of the dangers and sufferings that come from asking about the difficult things.
But there is no need to fear. The simple reality is that we have been blessed with the capacity for more. We can, upon recognizing in ourselves the desire for a more intense experience of life, and also our tendency to shy away from it (whether out of apathy or fear), begin to shake off the dust from our lesser-used faculties and start to engage the questions that have shored up at the corners of our minds.
It’s not meant as a burdensome task, or as a leaden obligation – or even as a mystical experience that will lead us away from the plain realities of normal life. No. Rather, the entire thrust of this activity – this uncovering of the spiritual senses – is to welcome us more robustly into our day-to-day living. To be charged with a sense of possibility – and to act with integrity (of thought, word, and desire) – is the work of a soul on this particular path.
Lest I veer off into more abstractions, let me write just one thing more:
If you find yourself stuck in the sort of inertia or ennui that makes you wonder why you even bother to wake up at all – why not try to take a few minutes (10 or 15, say) and gather your thoughts? See if there isn’t some pressing desire or question that seems to want your attention. Open the door – even a smidge – to see what new information this desire, or this question, brings with it.
Don’t be afraid; merely stay curious.
Then, after some time of gathering information, close your eyes and rest.
Let the answers (if there are any) find you in their own way, in their own time. If you keep the door cracked, and your senses engaged, you will see what I mean.
The project of living – is hard. But sometimes we make things harder than they need to be by ignoring the wisdom that’s already in our souls.
Will you put away your doubts – even for a day – and see for yourself the life that’s waiting to break free?