Ten Recommended Spiritual Exercises

Talking about the use of the server-splitting maul earlier reminded me that I had been planning to publish my list of ten spiritual exercises. I don't promise they will bring you closer to God (or whichever entity or entities, Being or beings you choose to follow) - but they will help you in your pursuit of something like a spiritual experience.

1. Chopping wood - the reason why I remembered this. The rhythmic chopping of wood with a nice well-balanced maul can separate you from the world around you and set you free from your troubled mind. The regular action of the maul, and of your arms and back as you swing it, are a kind of meditation. At least up to the point where the bloke putting the logs on the chopping block takes his hands away slightly too slowly, and his screaming as he looks at his crushed fingers shakes you out of your blissful state. The managed use of firewood - merely returning to the atmosphere the carbon that the tree took from it, and then planting another tree in its place - is a spiritual matter in its own right, placating Mother Gaia and enabling us to hope she won't notice the 4x4 in the drive.

2. Eating peri-peri sauce. Somehow the combination of lemon and chilli hits a centre in your brain that releases more endorphins than chilli alone. A nice peri-peri chicken and you're at one with the universe. If not necessarily with the chicken. Some of the male Beaker Folk, in their dunder-headed way of trying to prove who's the most spiritual, like to eat the sauce as hot as they can - I remember the pot of Naga Naga Chicken that Grulsch cooked up last year. And I like to encourage them. Partly for their spiritual fulfilment, and partly because the pain the next morning reminds them that we are not on this planet for pleasure alone.

3. Watching trees blow in the wind. There's something of the "as the spirit moved them" about a tree blowing in the wind. It's a real spiritual contact point. Ideally I like to recommend that Beaker people do an equally spiritual activity at the same time - something like digging a field, or weeding.

4. Lighting a tea light. Simple, inexpensive, traditional and reliable. And if you want that extra mood-enhancement, you can choose lavender-scented for relaxing, or vanilla for stimulus.

5. Going downhill in a bath-tub. There is nothing like going downhill in a bath-tub to give you a spiritual experience. Or, at least, to make you feel closer to your maker.

6. Watching water run through your hands. I like to encourage the Beaker People to watch water (or, if they prefer, sand - I'm no spiritual dictator) flowing through their hands. It reminds us that time runs away every day - that we must redeem every moment. It's also quite a nice analogy for the way that we can allow money to run through our hands and down into those religious institutions that really need it.

7. Yo-yos.   That's a word I often use to describe many of the Beaker People. It doesn't help their spiritual growth, but makes me pity them. So that must be good for me in the long run?

8. Laying down and facing up into the sky on a bright summer's day. It's a true spiritual experience, as attested by Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles. You can feel quite liberated. Sometimes we have to go round checking the Beaker People that do this for actual (as opposed to spiritual) blindness, as they have a habit of looking straight at the sun. Devout, but necessarily over-bright. Not really an insult, more the way I prefer our Folk.

9. Meditating on a hazelnut. It worked for Mother Julian, so why not for us? Out of season, try meditating on a pack of shelled hazelnuts.  If you suffer from a nut allergy, try meditating on a golf ball. If you suffer from a meditation allergy, try eating the hazelnut. Unless if you have a nut allergy as well, in which case why not have a nice game of golf? That's the kind of tedium that can really help you break through spiritually.

10 As a last resort, you could try prayer. But be careful. It could change your way of life. You might discover you'd be safer with the peri chicken.