It doesn’t matter who we are, there is always something going wrong from time to time. The central heating boiler packs up, family discord breaks out, or an illness starts up. Most of us are sometimes tempted to throw up our hands in dismay. Why can’t I have a better life?
After experiencing a misfortune of some sort, you might step back away from things and take a moment for reflection. Perhaps brood over what is going on. Maybe noticing a negative mood. Thoughts that can crop up include ‘Why am I taking this so badly?’ ‘Why am I so easily dissatisfied?’ and ‘How come I get pessimistic?’
Inner and outer
It is as if something or someone is calling us to notice that there is a distinction between what is going on around us and our reaction to it; between our outer living and inner being. If so, we begin to grasp that there is more to life than meets the eye. Perhaps a better life is actually possible.
To change one’s life is not to change outer circumstances: it is (to seek) to change one’s reactions. (Maurice Nicholl writer in esoteric psychology)
You might say, ‘Hang on a minute. Surely happiness comes from our external conditions ‒ a worry-free financial life, a comfortable home, and good holidays. Who doesn’t want to win a fortune on the lottery?’
However, research studies repeatedly find that, except in cases of hardship and poverty, when extra income does relieve suffering and bring security, there is actually no correlation between wealth and happiness, between having all the trimmings and experience a better life.
One-time Prime Minister, David Cameron stated ‘It is time we focused not just on GDP but on GWB, general well-being.’. The underlying assumption is that the economic measure GDP depends in part on GWB. Absentee rates, tax revenues spent on long-term disability benefits, sluggish performance at work due to depression, erratic performance due to anxiety, the effects of alcohol: all count against GDP.
Social identity
Sometimes the individual seeks a new identity as a radical move to find a better life. For example this might come about following a failed intimate relationship, or as a child experiencing over-controlling or neglectful parents.
Whatever the reason we may suppose that we need to make a radical gesture in order to change our lives. But I would ask you to consider whether drastic actions like migration to another country, a name change, plastic surgery (even if it rectifies a bodily deformity) or even adopting the identity of the opposite sex, actually cause any transformation in one’s soul. In other words, are these not symbolic actions based on magical thinking that take over when enlightened and realistic coping is forsaken? None of these changes seem to address the central issue of life which I would argue is how one can find a higher and more fulfilling level of spiritual functioning.
Health care and education
By 2001 almost half the general practices of England were providing access to complementary and alternative forms of healing which frequently incorporate inner-life spirituality. Within hospices, holistic spiritual counselling of a life-focused nature has probably become the norm. An increasing number of primary schools provide yoga, tai chi, and other activities to contribute to the educational goals of developing the ‘whole child’ in an individual-centred way with humanistic and expressive values well in evidence. It is true that here are opportunities for us to find a better life.
A deeper spiritual approach
Lack of inner well-being might mean one feels an incomplete person. It might show itself as feeling ‘not good enough’, doing the same things, saying the same things, or regretting the same things. I know that’s sometimes true for me. Or maybe we hanker after something or someone different around us but don’t quite know what or who.
If life seems hollow, discouraging, or lacking in interest, we yearn for a better life involving something extra. We recognize there might be poverty in our inner condition
We may feel discontented, but does that stop us from trying to find inner healing and well-being that might lead to a better life? The alternative of passively relying on time to improve our character is unlikely to work because the problem is within. This would mean not being spiritually alive to the opportunity for growth that our precious and limited time in this world is offering.
So not surprisingly, inner-life spirituality has sprung up within influential mainstream fields such as press and women’s magazines. We can welcome this development. The expressions ‘mind-body-spirit’ and ‘holistic’ are encountered in numerous contexts including advertising ‒ going deeper to reach the parts that other aspects of life cannot reach, to feel good about oneself.
Inner transformation
Do we all need inner personal transformation? There is a reason for saying ‘yes’. As well as some good-natured characteristics, we also inherited a strong tendency to see things from our own point of view. If we are not careful, this self-focus can turn into selfishness and all the vices and misery associated with that.
Is there a pattern in my life of over-indulgence, lack of effort, drifting, shutting my eyes to a painful truth, self-justification, or blaming others?
Writers in the field of spirituality often refer to a process of inner awakening of awareness that goes beyond ordinary existence and instead provides insight into universal truths.
It means going beyond the mind and the ego and realizing who you really are. (Remez Sasson, writer on personal development)
Religious traditions have been seen to offer release from social oppression and physical poverty in another life after death. As well one can see what they are offering as a way to find deeper personal growth in this life. A better life that is free from discontent and confusion. The hope here is to find illumination about what is truly good and useful in the circumstances we find ourselves in and thus the discovery of peace, contentment, and even joy and enlightened understanding. In other words a spiritual transformation.
According to the esoteric spiritual writer Maurice Nicoll, personal transformation is a definite possibility in everyone and is the real goal of existence.
Copyright 2023 Stephen Russell-Lacy
Author of Heart, Head & Hands Swedenborg’s perspective on emotional problems
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