On My Mind
By Joseph Dispenza (July 14, 2006)

The monastery of the mind
This indeed is a safe refuge, it is the refuge supreme. It is the refuge whereby one is freed from all suffering.

                             —Prince Gautama Siddharta, the Buddha

Last month, I was on tour in the Southwest and Texas with my new book, God On Your Own. Except for a brief trip earlier in the year to visit family, I had not been in the States for a while. What hit me most about the trip, I suppose, was the emphasis in conversations on things like real estate, cars, shopping and eating. In my talks at bookstores and conferences, I was speaking about spiritual pursuits, but in the between times I heard a lot about decidedly nonspiritual topics.

The shadow of materialism (dollar-value) fell everywhere, even in the midst of what now passes for serious talk on serious topics. A numbing kind of anti-intellectualism (“I’m dumb, and proud of it!”) appears to have set in north of the border. If it is possible to be both dumbed-down and super-sized, our mainstream culture has discovered the secret.

Beyond that, I picked up a peculiar sense of anticipation of something bad about to happen, as if everyone I spoke with was waiting for the other shoe to drop. The first shoe, of course, would be the one that was dropped on September 11, 2001. I sensed a feeling, as well, of the confusion that comes when everything is changing too quickly.

In the foreword to God On Your Own, Thomas Moore, the author of Care of the Soul, says that at this time of seeming chaos in the outside world, we are called to an inner monasticism. Just as in Europe during the fall of the Roman Empire and the long Dark Ages that followed it, we are beset today with tremendous conflicts all over the world (this world that was supposed to be our beautiful garden). 

These upheavals now come directly into our living rooms and home offices via the miraculous communications technologies we have created. We sit there looking at suicide bombers, the ravages of war, incomprehensible human behaviors (dumping an infant in a garbage bin, shooting down coworkers) and attacks on basic human freedoms and wonder if the whole world isn’t going a bit mad.

Add to these the relentless assaults by nature we are experiencing suddenly, whether in the form of tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes or some other natural disaster. There is epic flooding in the East and unprecedented wildfires in the West. We barely get to recover from one disaster before another strikes.

I believe we are experiencing a “paradigm crunch,” a time between one way of seeing ourselves and the world and another way. We don’t know what the new version will look like (we have some indications), but it does seem clear that we are in the midst of transition on a vast scale. 

The monasteries of the Middle Ages were places of sacred refuge, where learning was preserved and advanced, and the idea of direct connection to the spiritual source was remembered and fostered. As the barbarians were storming the gates of a thousand cities and bickering barons were slaughtering one another’s armies for tiny pieces of turf, the monks quietly went about their business copying manuscripts and creating libraries, cultivating herbs for healing, living according to a rule of simplicity and self-discipline.

In a world of noise, the monks, behind their walls, were silent. In a world of rampant materialism, violence and inhumanity, the monks calmly paced their cloisters, saving what was best in the culture and best in themselves. 

When I lived a monastic life for eight years, I literally was living the way those monks of the Middle Ages lived. Today, I try to have a monastic attitude in everything I do. In this challenging time of global change, I find it helpful to go to that cloister within—that place of sacred refuge—where I can, like the monks of old, go quietly about the business of service to the higher nature of a world that will eventually awaken to its essential spiritual character.

In these crazy times, it may be helpful to find that place within to which you can retire from time to time during the day. There in the sacred refuge, in silence and serenity, the best of the human spirit still reigns. The world may be in chaos, but we don’t have to be. 

Joseph Dispenza is a spiritual counselor in private practice and the award-winning author of a dozen books. He is a cofounder of LifePath in San Miguel and can be reached at Joseph@LifePathRetreats.com.