The spiritual path we keep overlooking while looking for the spiritual path
I have, over the years, been a bit of a collector. Not of objects, exactly, but of teachings. Wisdom traditions. Practices. Ways of understanding what it means to be human and, on a particularly well caffeinated day, awake to that fact.
A little yoga philosophy here. Some mindfulness there. A respectful nod to neuroscience so no one thinks I have floated off entirely. A soft spot for poetry. And, every now and then, a willingness to wander into religious territory and see what is actually being pointed to beneath all the robes and stained glass. It is a rich buffet. Also, if I am being honest, occasionally a little suspicious.
There is a quiet, almost mischievous simplicity running through so many of the great wisdom traditions, whether you wander through the teachings of Buddha or Jesus, sit with Laozi, or read someone like Jon Kabat-Zinn or Emily Dickinson. Different languages, different metaphors, different rituals, and yet they keep pointing, again and again, to something almost embarrassingly straightforward.
Spend enough time grazing at this buffet, ancient, modern, sacred, secular, and something starts to feel like a cosmic inside joke. They keep saying the same thing.
Not in the details, of course, because those are wildly different. Different languages, metaphors, rituals, different cultural outfits. One tradition chants. Another sits very still. Another sings. Another studies the brain and uses words like prefrontal cortex in a reassuring tone. But underneath all of that is a kind of quiet through line that is so simple it almost feels like a letdown.
Pay attention. Be here. Notice.
That’s it. That is the whole dramatic reveal. No secret handshake. No Level 7 initiation. No velvet rope separating the beginners from spiritual VIPs. Just an ongoing invitation to come into direct contact with your own life as it is actually unfolding.
Which sounds lovely. And also, if you are anything like me, just a little annoying. Because the mind craves something with a bit more architecture: a path, a system, a sense of advancement. Maybe even a certificate at the end. It feels almost embarrassingly straightforward. Surely there is an advanced version or a hidden director’s cut.
And yet.
You hear it in the clarity of the Buddha’s teachings. In the spare poetry of Taoist thought. In the language of modern mindfulness. And in other traditions too, especially in those moments that feel less like doctrine and more like a direct invitation. Look. Notice. Be awake to what is here. Sometimes it’s described as something already close at hand. Not somewhere off in the distance, but right here. Hiding in plain sight like a very unassuming miracle.
Which is both wonderful and deeply inconvenient. Because I can read about presence. I can teach presence. I can even speak a little eloquently about presence while using my hands in what I believe are very convincing gestures.
And still I can find myself halfway through a cup of coffee having not tasted a single sip. Still find myself walking into a room and forgetting why I am there, while simultaneously planning next Tuesday.
Still, in other words, not here.
Which is perhaps why the simplicity keeps returning, like a very patient friend who does not give up on you, even when you keep checking your phone mid conversation. Not as a command or as a rule, but more like a gentle nudge.
Hey. You might try this.
Feel your feet for a moment. Notice the breath without trying to improve it. Let the sounds in the room arrive without turning them into a story about your neighbor’s leaf blower. Nothing mystical required. No special cushion needed. No belief system necessary.
Just this small, radical act of not abandoning the moment you are already in. It does not mean life suddenly becomes easy or pain disappears. It simply means we are no longer standing at a distance from our own lives, waiting for them to start. The gazillion traditions may disagree on theology, cosmology, rituals, and rules. But this thread keeps showing up like a quiet refrain: Nothing extra required. Nothing missing. Just this, now. And the willingness to notice it. Embarrassingly straightforward.
And perhaps that is why we keep overlooking it, because it asks nothing of us except that we be here enough to see that nothing was ever missing.
