The Seven Practices that Awaken Heart and Mind - Roger Walsh (Summary)

 

Sources:

·         Roger Walsh, Essential Spirituality [ES] (Wiley, 1999).

·         What do religions have in common? (interview with Roger Walsh): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45zKtNpQPz4&list=WL&index=35&t=149s

Roger Walsh was trained in medicine and psychotherapy. At a certain point in his psychotherapy training, he was astounded to discover a fascinating interior world that exists within himself, something he wasn’t much aware of before like many people in the contemporary world who live superficially at the level of the exterior. This intrigued him and prompted him to explore the world’s religious and spiritual-wisdom traditions because they have offered the world time-tested methods to deal with this important interior dimension.

     As a result of his research he published Essential Spirituality: The 7 Central Practices to Awaken Heart and Mind in 1999. Here he distills the practical wisdom offered by various spiritual-wisdom traditions in order to live life fully and realize our full nature into seven central practices. The book explains these practices extensively in the different chapters with various helpful and practical suggestions to apply each practice more concretely into daily life in the form of “exercises.”  

The seven perennial practices are:

(1) transform your motivation: reduce craving and find your soul's desire;

(2) cultivate emotional wisdom: heal your heart and learn to love;

(3) live ethically: feel good by doing good;

(4) concentrate and calm your mind;

(5) awaken your spiritual vision: see clearly and recognize the sacred in all things;

(6) cultivate spiritual intelligence: develop wisdom and understand life; and

(7) express spirit in action: embrace generosity and the joy of service.

 

Further Elaboration on the Seven Practices 

(descriptions are by jkk)

[1] Transform your motivation: Reduce craving and find your soul's desire

Keywords: desire, craving, attachment 

Humans have many "wants," "desires," and "cravings." Many times, these are for things that do not bring authentic happiness and deep meaning in life. The first practice consists in the effort to reduce and eliminate "lower" desires. It then continues to enable one to search for one’s deeper, nobler and higher desires—the ones that bring us genuine meaning and authentic happiness. 

Sample Exercises: Frustrate an addiction; Recognize pain as feedback; Dedicate an activity to a higher purpose

 

[2] Cultivate emotional wisdom: Heal your heart and learn to love

Keywords: emotional wisdom, healing, "love"

Acquiring "emotional wisdom" refers to: knowing how to deal with difficult emotions (fear, anxiety, etc.), processing shadows and hurts (through acceptance and forgiveness) and, more positively, acquiring good emotional virtues such as compassion and gratitude.

Sample Exercises: Heal an emotional hurt; Give a gift to someone you don’t like; Say grace; Spend a day of thankfulness

 

[3] Live ethically: Feel good by doing good

Keywords: Ethical living

Living ethically is the concrete fruit that spirituality produces. It does not only benefit others - it benefits yourself as well. It will make you experience a genuine and deep peace and happiness.

Sample Exercises: Give up gossip; Communicate to heal; Right a wrong

 

[4] Concentrate and calm your mind

Keywords: Calming the mind, Concentration

The focus of this practice is taming the "monkey mind" - that is, our distracted, wandering, restless minds and hearts. This is an absolute condition for developing spirituality. I understand “spirituality” to be: paying attention to the "scientifically non-quantifiable" aspects of ourselves and engaging seriously in the human quest for meaning, depth and transcendence. Walsh describes “spirituality” as “a direct experience of the Sacred.”

Sample Exercises: Do one thing at a time with mindfulness; Take regular breath meditations; Transform interruptions into wakeup calls

 

[5] Awaken your spiritual vision: see clearly and recognize the sacred in all things

Keywords: Vision, seeing, the Sacred

When you're able to be calm and concentrate, it's time to acquire a new way of viewing and understanding the world - this is the way by which you can see that the "Sacred" is what holds the whole world. The Sacred (Spirit, the Greater Power, the Numinous, God) is actually the core and ground of everything; it also encompasses all things.

Sample Exercises: Eat mindfully; Become a good listener; See teachers everywhere; Recognize the sacred in nature

[6] Cultivate spiritual intelligence: develop wisdom and understand life

Keywords: spiritual intelligence, wisdom

I consider this the effort to "take practice #5 a notch higher." We don't stop at having new eyes to view the world. We go further on our spiritual quest and strive to acquire wisdom to understand more deeply the true nature and meaning of life, of humanity, of the world, of reality.

Sample Exercises: Commit time to silence and solitude; Practice spiritual reading; Enjoy the company of the wise 

 

[7] Express spirit in action: embrace generosity and the joy of service

Keywords: action, service

Our transformed heart and mind; our new vision, our deepening wisdom - all of these bear concrete fruit not only in ethical living but in various forms of compassionate service for our fellow humans. Again, this does not only benefit others; it actually benefits ourselves first.

Sample Exercises: Turn work into service; Change pain into compassion; Pay something forward; Give anonymously

 

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