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Practices From the Inside Out: The Limits of Spiritual Life

Practices From the Inside Out: The Limits of Spiritual Life

Last updated on: September 2, 2017 at 3:14 am by Greg Richardson

Practices From the Inside Out: The Limits of Spiritual Life 2017-09-02T03:14:37-08:00 Greg Richardson

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The Limits of Spiritual Life

Some of us believe spiritual life has strict limitations. Acting those ways, having these opinions, even some churches are outside the limits. For them, spiritual life is about staying inside the limits and bringing in people who are outside.

When I was growing up I lived inside the limitations. The people around me thought spiritual life was about giving up trips outside the limits.

The idea of the limitations of spiritual life made me curious about what was out there.

People who understood the limits always seemed so clear about where they were. They took the limits of spiritual life very seriously and you were either in or out.

I noticed, though, that the limits had a way of moving. Things on the outside never seemed to move inside. The movement was almost always that things we thought were on the inside moved out.

The limitations seemed to be making spiritual life smaller and smaller.

My curiosity motivated me to visit outside the limitations, just to explore. I would ask people I respected about what I discovered on my visits.

Why is this behavior beyond the limitations of spiritual life life when that opinion is not? How do we know where the limits are? Who gets to decide what is inside and what is outside the limitations of spiritual life?

Someone explained to me there was not a line or border around spiritual life. It was more like a boundary with a gray area between the two sides.

Some things were clearly part of spiritual life and other things were clearly outside. Between the two were things which were unclear, but it was best to avoid them, too.

You never knew when you might be enticed beyond the boundary of spiritual life.

Going Beyond the Limits

It intrigued me that spiritual life was described as a source of love with such strict limitations. Why could spiritual life not be a little more flexible and create room for more people? If spiritual life has the power to make our lives better then where do the limits come from?

I thought I knew something about limitations.

There were people who appeared to have a firm grasp on my limitations. They seemed to go out of their way to let me know what they were and why they were significant.

Some of those people also inspired me to deal with limitations by going beyond them.

They helped me learn what I saw as limitations were not the end of the story.

Limits and limitations are not carved in stone. There is no fence topped with barbed wire keeping us limited. We can work to get past our limitations.

Limitations do not mean we stop trying. The qualities we see as limitations are actually showing us where we have potential to grow.

Recognizing our limitations is more about focusing our efforts than about what we cannot do.

I wondered about what it was like out beyond the limits of spiritual life. My curiosity got me to explore beyond the limitations.

I discovered the limitations we put on spiritual life do not come from spiritual life itself. We put those limitations on how spiritual life works.

When we look beyond our limitations we find we impose them ourselves.

I got to know people who seemed to live beyond the spiritual life limitations I had learned. They had spiritual life of their own where I had expected there not to be any. Spiritual life in them might have looked different to me, but it was still spiritual life.

Why Do We Try to Limit Spiritual Life?

My exploration of the limits of spiritual life taught me to perceive limitations in new ways.

Getting to know people who experienced spiritual life differently reminded me I could not control it. Spiritual life is alive in us even when we do not have the same sets of right answers.

We each try to set our own limitations on spiritual life, but it chooses to ignore them. Spiritual life continues to grow and reach out beyond the arbitrary limits we try to impose. It lives and loves beyond what we can understand.

The one thing which is consistently true is spiritual life will not allow us to limit it.

Spiritual life is a uniquely unrestrained and powerful source of love. It transcends and breaks through our attempts to describe it or control it. Spiritual life does not need the limitations we want to see to protect itself.

In fact, the nature of spiritual life is not to protect itself.

We think we are helping, creating a special preserve where spiritual life can be safe. We are actually trying to protect ourselves.

Spiritual life transforms us and how we experience the rest of the universe. It can be a force which disrupts our ordered ways of understanding things.

We like to put things into categories and spiritual life shows us all our organizing is futile. Spiritual life is dynamic and alive. It brushes our mental frameworks aside.

Spiritual life refuses to live constrained by our limitations, which can be intimidating.

Showing Us How to Live Beyond Limits

Spiritual life inspires us and teaches us how to live beyond limits. When we follow its example we learn deep, Sacred truths about our potential for change.

Part of the essential nature of spiritual life is living beyond our expected limitations. We try to restrict it and protect it, but it insists on being itself.

Spiritual life draws us into a living relationship by refusing to live according to our limitations. We are enticed beyond the limits we set for ourselves and transformed by spiritual life.

Spiritual life teaches us our limits do not protect us. It is all around us and within us inviting us to leave our limitations behind.

Where do you see your limits this week? How will you live beyond them?

How does spiritual life inspire you to live beyond limitations today?

[Image by Carodean Road Designs]

Greg Richardson is a spiritual life mentor and leadership coach in Southern California. He is a recovering attorney and university professor, and a lay Oblate with New Camaldoli Hermitage near Big Sur, California. Greg’s website is StrategicMonk.com, and his email address is [email protected].

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