Saturday, September 20, 2025

The Goal of Spiritual Practice


Spiritual practice is to the mystical life what food and water is to the body. Just as we cannot survive very long without food and water, we cannot survive on the spiritual journey without a contemplative practice of some sort. It is the inner source of nourishment and growth, and it unites with the efforts of the divine, or the ultimate nature of the mind itself.

There are many forms of spiritual practice as there are individuals. Forms may differ, but the goal is the same: integration and transformation. To achieve authentic spirituality, genuine mysticism, we must adopt some form of spiritual practice.

Wayne Teasdale
Excerpted from The Mystic Heart
New World Library, 1999
p. 141


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Cultivating Stillness
Diarmuid O’Murchú on Our Capacity to Meditate
Active Waiting: A Radical Attitude Toward Life
Prayer and the Experience of God in an Ever-Unfolding Universe
Thoughts on Transformation – Part I | Part II | Part III
As the Last Walls Dissolve . . . Everything Is Possible
Forever Oneness
The Most Sacred and Simple Mystery of All
The Source Is Within You
Honoring the Inner Light of the Soul
A Warrior’s Heart
In the Midst of the “Great Unraveling,” a Visit to the Prayer Tree
“Everything Is Saturated With the Sacred”
A Sacred Pause
Aligning With the Living Light
Mystical Participation
A Prayer of Anchoring
Thoughts on Christian Meditation – Part 1 | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.


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