Breaking Spiritual Inertia: Embracing Growth Through Discipline

In the realm of the will, there is something like the power of inertia in the physical realm. It is easier to do what you have done than what you have not, and especially then what goes contrary to what you have done. You tend to keep on doing what you have done, and the more so, the more you have done it. [00:03:06]

As I more habitually hoard my money, it gets easier to do that. The more that I give it on the positive side, the more that that can happen. The more I withdraw, I can use withdraw as my weapon of choice when I'm angry, and eventually, it overwhelms me. [00:03:39]

Dallas says we may come to identify our will with our desire, and a powerful desire may throw us into something like a hypnotic state in order to achieve its satisfaction, often in horrible deeds. In addition, when the will is enslaved to a desire, it will in turn enslave the mind to justify itself in satisfying the desire. [00:04:47]

The will enlists the intellect to provide rationalizations, frequently so bizarre that they amount to selective insanity. Now there's another phrase: spiritual inertia, now selective insanity. Then, of course, the individual in question doesn't say things that make no sense to anyone. They are hypnotized by their evil desires. [00:05:16]

Our primary aim in stepping free from the entanglements must be to overcome duplicity. To overcome it, we must be conscious of it, confront it, take appropriate steps to forsake it, and the primary plan here is to intend to do what God has said that God wills. [00:07:10]

A major service of spiritual disciplines like solitude, being alone with God for long periods of time, fasting, learning freedom from food and how God directly nourishes us, worship, adoration of God, service, doing good for others with no thought of ourselves, is to cause the duplicity and malice that is buried in our will and character to surface and be dealt with. [00:08:20]

These disciplines make room for the word and spirit to work in us, and they permit destructive feelings, feelings usually veiled by standard practices and circumstances and rationalizations, to be perceived and dealt with for what they are, our will, not God's will. [00:09:02]

Your mind will talk to you, Dallas says, when you begin to deny fulfillment to your desires, and you will find how subtle and shameless it is. And then Dallas writes, I know this from experience. That's the phrase that I loved reading in this book. Your mind is subtle and shameless to an extent you cannot imagine. [00:09:38]

What happens when we engage in spiritual practices is not that we're earning brownie points with God or showing how spiritual we are. Quite the opposite. We are making space for the truth that is within us to come up. So, for example, this morning, I make space to pray. [00:10:12]

While I'm doing that, my mind begins to have this thought of people who I really deeply resent and dislike, and I imagine, I fantasize how I might write about them in a public way to discredit them and how I could even write something about myself that isn't true that would gain me more credibility with the larger public and make them look even worse. [00:10:32]

Dallas says it's doing what spiritual disciplines need to do, and that is bring to the surface how subtle and shameless my silly little mind is, so I can offer it to God, and then comes the weeping of the virus. Oh God, prune me. Where do you need to be pruned? [00:11:04]

Let God prune so that when the spring comes, there will be the weeping of the vine and more fruit. [00:11:37]