Searching for Something Deeper and Truer

Spirituality in everyday life

“This is part of a huge cultural shift,” said [clinical psychologist Lisa] Miller, who'd barely heard about spirituality in academia when she started out 20 years ago. “We’re evolving – as a collective – and finding something deeper, more true and more permanent.” 

The story from India “stimulated not only my intellect but also awakened my soul,” wrote one of the readers. 

“It inspired me to live my life with a more open heart,” said another. 

“An energy forced me to read your article,” wrote a third. “While reading, I cried, reflected on my life, felt the wounds of my daughters, exclaimed pain from my sister’s suicide, gave thanks to my parents and even sent advice to a guy I just met. I’m not sure where this will all lead.” 

Miller attributes this opening up, at least in part, to a loss of security, a response to challenges. Financial downturns and, for some, implosions. Natural disasters. School shootings. Domestic terrorism. Pick your pain.

Reference: The new American dream: Searching for spirituality.

Whether we call it spirituality, religion, philosophy, metaphysics or something else, and whether it's clear and firm in our lives or not, that search Lisa Miller refers to is a real thing.  Since the start of the new millennium, our lives around the world have ranged from breathtaking and dramatic, heartbreaking and despondent.  Pick your pain is absolutely right.

In a way T'ai Chi is a solution, a salve, a salvation for me.  I've been practicing and studying it since May 1978, and it's been the one true anchor in my life.  Of course it has its own principles, values and form, but it can liberate any of us from more dogmatic versions of principles, values and form.  It is akin to what Bruce Lee related in Jeet Kune Do:  You take and you adopt what works best for you, and you discard and you dismiss what doesn't.  Or at least set aside what doesn't quite makes sense for now, then maybe come back to it another time.