But what exactly is practicing?

In everyday language, practicing is generally understood as “practicing a religion”, that is observing a set of rites and instructions, such as prayers, fasts, dietary laws, commemorations or specific ceremonies on certain occasions. People usually tend to reduce spirituality to religion and to consider that practicing means abiding by more or less dogmatic rites, prescriptions and restrictions. Such misunderstanding makes it impossible to consider the possibility of believing without belonging to a religious group or conversely, impossible to practice religious rites without believing in their spiritual foundations. Difficult as this latter attitude may seem to understand, I have personally encountered such cases.

We will still have to understand the possible function of certain rites, particularly the usefulness of prayer in a spiritual approach, but to begin, it is necessary to define what we mean by “practice”. In other words, how can “a practice” be defined if it does not mean practicing rites?

A minimal definition, in keeping with the one proposed by Ostad Elahi, would take up just one sentence: to practice means to develop virtues in ourselves by struggling against our character faults, be they innate or acquired. A first deduction would then be the following: knowing that the purpose of practicing is the transformation of the self and considering that we are permanently, so to speak, in the presence of our own self except when sleeping or in a coma, it is possible for us to practice at any moment. Then we discover that each particle of our daily life involves an opportunity to struggle against our failings and develop our qualities, from the moment we wake up till the moment we go to sleep, in all our acts and in each and every thought crossing our minds or every emotion experienced during the day. Consequently, and contrary to what is usually thought, practice would therefore not be linked with certain places, certain times or days in the week; it would constitute the invisible fabric of our daily life, provided we look at it in an active state of mind and consider each situation a possible opportunity to carry out our ethical principles.

But enough of this theorizing: practically speaking, what does “to practice” mean?

The newcomer

I belong to a work group which functions very harmoniously. What I like best is to feel useful and appreciated by a team that often gives me opportunities to show my skills in a flattering light. I enjoy working in such conditions, feeling well integrated and recognized as being competent. One day, the team temporarily grew bigger when someone new attended one of our meetings, someone who obviously wanted to join the group on a permanent basis. Just after that meeting, we all got together to exchange our impressions on the “newcomer”. Most of my colleagues were very enthusiastic about seeing the person again after that first meeting which admittedly the person had managed to make a very favorable one. Without being able to clearly analyze the reason at the time, I couldn’t help but feel some dull pain deep down inside me. I had an unpleasant impression of discomfort which grew greater and greater as the discussion was evolving towards a unanimous opinion among all my colleagues. As for me, I was more than doubtful. Irrational as it may have seemed, I felt as if I was personally threatened. My position in the team had been very rewarding thus far and I couldn’t help thinking that that valued equilibrium might be challenged by the arrival of a new element. The powerful desire to intervene and say something to restrain the group’s enthusiasm crossed my mind. I could have easily done so by uttering some criticism which, although not directly related to the subject, might have somewhat tarnished the still immaculate image of that person whom I undeniably saw as a competitor.

And then, crash!

It was our lunch break. I had been waiting for that moment for days. One of my best friends works in the same neighborhood as I do, but we never have time to meet. We had been meaning to have lunch together, but with the amount of work we have, it took us weeks before we could eventually spend some time together. I knew she had tons of things to tell me about what had been happening to her since she’d changed departments and since her love life had started going wild; she had e-mailed me that she’d met the man of her life. So there we were, the two of us, all excited and happy to be together. But hardly had we settled down than an old acquaintance of mine showed up, a person I had never really hit it off with but who, for some obscure reason, appreciated me. I couldn’t avoid saying hello. She was alone and there was a free seat at our table. In a quarter of a second, the dilemma was obvious and almost tragic: I was dying (and so was my friend) to finally spend some good time talking about some very personal matters with one of my best friends and if I invited that other person to sit down with us, our whole plan would fall through and that moment would have to be postponed.

First conclusions

Several lessons can be drawn from these two very commonplace experiences. In each case, despite the apparent composure of the narrator and the triviality of the circumstances, the person is faced with genuine inner agitation. In both accounts, different currents of thought patterns can be perceived, with contradictory emotions, raw impulses, premises for reasoning, scruples and hesitations. To put it simply, in the two sequences of events, there is an imperious desire to let oneself go and surrender to some immediate impulse which is apparently legitimate but always aims at preserving one’s comfort and immediate interest. Yet, in each case, this first impulse is countered by another demand that is directed towards a noble aim: respect for other people, giving up one’s primary objectives and showing altruism, generosity, loyalty and emotional detachment, in a word, humanity. This exercise does not seem to amount to much, but some real “inner turmoil” is experienced in these situations and we could find an infinite number of such examples. In the present cases, we do not know the end of the story so we do not know whether the narrators succeeded in living up to their personal ideal of humanity or not. They may have failed, but in any case, if they tried to resist, they undoubtedly experienced a burning sensation signaling that some interior struggle had taken place and that it had been” painful”, so to speak. After such pain, proportional to the effort made, they each developed their humanity a bit more. Sportsmen are familiar with that sensation of heat and slightly stinging numbness that corresponds to the combustion of lactic acid in a muscle during a sustained effort. They also know that it is their effort which makes it possible for them to increase their muscle mass by increasing the number and the diameter of the fibers that are activated during the exercise.

The other lesson to be learnt from these accounts may be even more important. In each case, the situation is so trivial and ordinary that one could easily experience it personally without realizing anything whatsoever. Looking back on it as an “outside observer”, it is easy to clearly distinguish each stage of the scenario, but when you go through such live situations personally, you do not always feel that inner tension, much less realize the ethical issue at stake. We can practice anywhere and in any circumstances, sometimes so close to us that it is all too easy to miss opportunities that arise under our very eyes. Occasions for practicing make up the invisible canvas of our daily life. Practice needs no particular place, time or conditions. This is what makes all the difference between practice in the ritual sense and practice in the spiritual sense.

That does not mean that what is commonly called ritual practice should be denied all value and this is particularly true for prayer and those privileged moments of attention to the divine. To use yet another medical metaphor, ritual practice acts as an adjuvant on our soul the way vitamins act on our physical organism; vitamins are essential to our metabolism in the sense that vitamin deficiency—avitaminosis—leads to death. But then again, a diet based on vitamins only would also lead to death, even more rapidly.

“Do you practice?” Here is a question that is often heard. Reconsidering what practicing means in the light of the few conclusions drawn from this reflection, would I say about myself that “I practice”?

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