Does Spiritual Practice Have to Look Like Meditation?

By Dr. Marie Feuer

Someone asked me how often I meditate and whether that has changed over time. Oh, yes. In the beginning, I was fanatic. I wasn’t feeling okay inside, and nothing out there was doing much for me, so I was determined to feel better. I sat down, did the practices, and kept going back. If you had met me then, you might have assumed that this was what a serious spiritual life would always look like: a person being very serious about getting her meditation done.

At that time, I had two older people in my life whom I called my spiritual parents. They were in their seventies; I was in my twenties. The work we did together opened experiences that were profoundly important to me. Later, one died and the other developed dementia, and I stepped away. I was also getting fed up with what I saw developing in the new age marketplace. It was commercial, not spiritual. Fun things to do and buy to keep the hard internal issues at bay. My very practical brain had a few things to say: spirituality is wonderful, but how is it actually changing the quality of my life? The “new age” became more about entertainment and distraction rather than changing the quality of my life. 

Then I moved to Los Angeles and met the person and channeled being that became my Teacher for the next 40 years. The energy I experienced with that practice felt like home. That word is the closest I can get to it. Part of me felt an enormous relief, and another part thought, “Oh, crap, now the real work begins.” I knew that going into this practice would ask something of me. Nevertheless, I couldn’t get enough. I was meditating, meeting, confronting and talking to my inner self, my inner parts. I also was able to go back to the joys of  talking to trees, talking to rocks, feeling the earth. Once again, the practice became a very large part of my life.

What changed later surprised me. When at 60 years old I began doing this work publicly as my business, my private meditation time decreased. I was spending so much time working with energy that the division between my spiritual life and the rest of my life had changed. When I had been a professor, there was the person who showed up in the classroom and the person who had these other experiences privately. Now there was more room to live with a foot in each world. I didn’t need to put away that whole part of myself before going to work.

I could have looked at the clock and decided I was becoming less spiritual. Fewer minutes sitting, fewer formal practices completed, therefore less commitment. But that would have missed what was actually happening. The connection was entering more of my day. The form of the practice was changing because my life was changing. I still needed to pay attention, but counting minutes would not have told me whether I was doing that.

My Teacher described this as a middle path. We were learning to connect with energy and bring that connection into everyday life. We were not all preparing to wear white diapers and move into a cave in the Himalayas. You can have a job, take care of animals, deal with the house, and live among other humans, including the ones who irritate the hell out of you. Those circumstances give you plenty to work with. You do not have to get away from your whole life before you can begin practicing.

To me, this is one of the most useful aspects of Taoism: everyday life is part of the practice. Awareness matters while you’re speaking to someone, noticing a reaction in yourself, or deciding whether to follow a quiet sense that something needs attention. You can check in with what you call Spirit, your higher power, or your own deeper knowing. You can consider intuition alongside logic. Formal meditation can help develop that capacity, but eventually there is the question of what happens when you stand up.

That doesn’t mean every period of not meditating is a sign of spiritual maturity. Sometimes I have stopped because I was angry, discouraged, or simply done with the whole thing. I have had years of thinking that if something was up there, it apparently didn’t give a shit about me. I’m not going to tidy that up and pretend every change in my practice was wise and intentional. There have been periods of connection, periods of resistance, and periods when I needed to earn money and get through the day.

Which is why I think “How often do you meditate?” is only the beginning of a useful conversation. What happens when you do? What happens when you stop? Some people discover that they miss the connection much more than they expected. Others discover that they are trying to force themselves into a practice because they think a spiritual person ought to want it. Those are different situations. Putting both people on the same schedule doesn’t address what either one is finding out.

In the conversation that prompted this article, the person asking me about meditation said they had initially felt very inspired. They thought they wanted to do much more of it, but then found they weren’t actually doing it. I think that is an interesting place to become curious. What did you imagine the practice would be like? What did you encounter? Does the form suit you? Are you avoiding something, or are you discovering that what you thought you wanted isn’t quite what you want? You can investigate those questions without immediately putting yourself on trial.

I expect my own practice to change again. Sometimes there may be a need for more structure, more quiet, or more sustained attention. At other times, the connection may be woven through the day in ways that don’t look particularly impressive from the outside. I don’t know why we expect a living practice to remain exactly the same while the person practicing gets older, loses people, changes work, and encounters things they could not have anticipated twenty years earlier.

What I value is having a relationship with that part of life that I can return to, question, argue with, and deepen. I have walked away and come back. The years I spent practicing were not erased because I went through a period of being furious or skeptical. Nor does a long history excuse me from paying attention now. There is always this life, this day, and the question of how I am actually living it.

If your spiritual practice has become another obligation you feel you’re failing, or your old way of practicing no longer fits, we can look at what is happening in private one-to-one work. 

I offer a 30-minute introductory Zoom session for $25. You can learn more at DrMarie.org.