A Life of Being, Having, and Doing Enough (2 page)

How do we start on this path, holding who we are and what we have with peace and contentment? How do we reclaim a life of deep sufficiency?

We begin within ourselves. The world around us will be unrelenting, saturating us with a multitude of offers of peace, contentment, and well-being through this or that purchase, event, affiliation, or experience. But our most reliable experience of
enough
begins within our own visceral experience; it is a sufficiency tasted first through intimate conversation between our own fully incarnated spirit and flesh. We feel
this sacramental sufficiency most reliably in the body—in the heart, chest, and belly.

In other words,
enough
is ultimately an inside job. However passionately we may argue or define or discern with any precision what is enough of anything, it is in the undeniable
yes
of our body—the unmistakable balance of spirit and life, in agreeable harmony with the world around us—that we feel either the cramping fear of scarcity, the bloated saturation of overabundance, or the gentle, effortless release of easy sufficiency.

Enough
, then, emerges within our body. As with all living things, it is always moving and changing. Whenever we try to achieve lasting, constant, predictable sufficiency in any area of our lives, we are swiftly disappointed and discouraged. The flaw inherent in capturing, predicting, or even planning for
enough
is that it is never a fixed quantity or stable measure or consistent state of being.

There is no guarantee we will ever find
enough
of anything in the same place, or in the same way, twice. As we grow and change, our experience of sufficiency grows and changes with us. Our needs and wants at fifteen years old are nearly unrecognizable to those we experience in our fifties. Our sense of sufficiency when born in a wealthy nation bears little resemblance to the forcibly constricted sufficiency of a poor one. Because our lives are ever-shifting, dynamic relationships between our mercurial wants and needs for company or solitude, busyness or stillness, giving or receiving, scarcity or abundance, love or fear, each moment we are engaged in impassioned conversation between whatever we seek and whatever we are given.

Enough is not only a relationship; it is played out in this moment, and the next, and the next. We can only experience a sense of enough when we are fully present and awake in this moment. The only moment we can feel and know with any fervent clarity or certainty is the moment we experience right now. The farther we get from this moment—the more we project outward into next week, next month, next year—the less and less we can truly know about who we will become or how the world may have completely reshaped itself around us.

What, then, can we do? We begin by listening, paying attention, gradually uncovering our own clarity and wisdom. If we are to learn to trust that inner knowing and rely upon the authority of our deepest heart’s intuition, this is where we must begin. For the voices of the world are loud, they are legion, and they are growing exponentially. These outer voices each have their most decidedly necessary prescription for our lives. Each screams louder than the next, insisting we listen to what they say, what we should need, want, buy, and do, to have a life of enough.

But when we can name with unwavering certainty the truth of who we are, what we need, and what we know to be true about ourselves in this moment, the closer we come to a more deeply accurate path to a life made of days, a life of perfect sufficiency. Enough, then, is a visceral experience, forged in relationship, most reliably born in this moment when we are passionately present and awake.

Human beings have an innate capacity to discern what is necessary or true; we have our own authentic, most reliable inner compass, a visceral knowing, an unmistakable sense in our hearts and bodies that indicates what is the next right thing
to do, to make, to become. This inner wholeness has been given many names—our spirit, our true nature, our spark of divinity, our subconscious, our intuition, our inner light. What lives and breathes in us is a knowing of what cannot be easily seen by appearance or named by language. This compass, this still, small voice, this absolutely trustworthy capacity to listen for what is right and true—it is from this place that we come to know, without doubt or hesitation, an undeniable certainty that who we are, and what we do, in this moment, embedded in a gentle peace beyond understanding, is wholly sufficient, simply and completely enough.

If we began our journey with this fierce affirmation of our own intrinsic wisdom, how, then, could we have so easily lost our way? And how do we learn to assert the authority of our own clarity and reclaim an unshakable trust in our own wholeness and deep inner sufficiency?

Resetting Our Inner Thermostat

W
hen we are unable to clearly identify what is
enough of anything
, it can feel more and more difficult to recognize when to stop striving or grasping in our
desperate pursuit of everything
. Unless we feel some certainty that our work, our gift, our time, our relationships, are, at the end of the day,
enough
, we may never feel permission to stop.

Most houses have a working thermostat that regulates the work of the heater, ensuring that it pumps precisely enough heat into the house. When this device informs the heater that our home has reached a sufficiently comfortable temperature, the heater can stop actively putting out heat. It powers itself down into a standby mode until it is needed again, whenever the temperature drops. Without a functional thermostat, the heater would just keep heating and heating until either the boiler finally exploded or the house burned down.

Where is the signal from our body, our heart, our inner knowing, that tells us we have done enough for now? Without any kind of reliable thermostat, we just keep going and going, never certain we can stop. There is no signal we recognize, no sign, no permission, no indication that it is time to rest, that it is all right, we have enough, we have done enough for now.

What if our inner thermostats are broken? What if we are already pushed to that breaking point? What if our house is already on fire? What if we have already done enough, been enough, given enough, shared enough, offered enough, created enough, for now, for today? How many of us can honestly claim to feel that what we did today was enough; that when we lay our head on our pillow at night, can honestly say, “Ah, that was a good day. That was enough”?

Teachers of many spiritual traditions often inquire: What if you already have what you seek? This question is aimed to stop us, make us confused, raise dozens of reasonable protests, throw up our arms, even declare the question ridiculous. Nevertheless, the question lives. It remains a most simple, familiar refrain: What is enough? And, more importantly, how would we ever know if we had it?

We may find it useful to inquire into our own thermostat. What if we take a moment and reflect on our life: How do we know, for example, when we have done enough work for this day? Is it when we collapse from complete exhaustion, however late at night? Or when the clock strikes a particular hour? Is it when we finish replying to all the e-mails in our inbox? How do we know when we have taken on too many projects? Is it when we get sick—or when so many mistakes start happening, each piling one upon the other, so that our life and work seem to just freeze up, paralyzed, unable to go on any further? What teaches us when to speed up, when to slow down, when to stop?

Most of us will find that the cacophony of external voices, demands, expectations, e-mails, and responsibilities from our
work, our culture, even our families, are the most powerful factors driving our sense of enough. This makes it difficult for us to listen, attend to, or rely on our more subtle, internal wisdom or intuitive responses—such as a cramped feeling in our belly when we’re invited to an event we’d rather not attend, or a gentle energetic leaning toward, or away from, a certain person, task, or responsibility.

When we feel compelled to comply with these external demands that determine what we will or will not take on—when we refuse to listen to, or even acknowledge, our inner sense of what is the most nourishing or right action for us to take in this moment—we gradually weaken the capacity of our inner thermostat to provide us with reliable, trustworthy information. Over time, we compromise our ability to tune in to our own knowing and live from our own unique and grounded sense of enough.

How do we know what even a single moment of
enough
feels like? Here, at the beginning of our journey together, it is useful for us to discover tools and trustworthy resources we may already have within ourselves. Using the clarity of our own quiet wisdom, we can sharpen our capacity to listen for what is necessary and true. We begin to live our days making choices from within the reliable wholeness of who we are and what we know. We use our heart’s best inner knowing of how to nourish, rather than deplete, the fullness and sufficiency of a day well spent and a life well lived.

Let us begin to experiment a little. We can start by trying to calibrate our own inner thermostat with one simple question. When approaching a task, a responsibility, or some choice between this and that, take a moment before you begin and ask
yourself: Am I truly able to say that I really love this? Or is it more honest to say that I can handle this?

You will know instantly which is true.

How you answer this question, the information you receive, may or may not cause you to stop, start, or change anything right away. But over time, if you step back for a moment before approaching any task, event, relationship, or responsibility and keep asking this same simple question, you will gather a tremendous amount of clear, useful, trustworthy information about your heart’s authentic desires, preferences, and dreams—as well as your sadness, discouragements, or regrets. Each and all of which, over time, shape a life of
enough
.

If we find that we
love
less and less of what we do, what we choose, or what we agree to—and feel more and more like we are barely able to
handle
our days—it is likely we will experience relatively few genuine feelings of enough in our daily life. On the other hand, the more we choose the next right thing based on what we love, and less on what we can handle, we are likely to have many sources of sufficiency and nourishment.

Perhaps, armed with this clarity of trust and assurance in our own wisdom, we may begin to make more mindful choices and listen more carefully for the love or sufficiency in the next right thing with a greater sense of clarity and courage.

Deadly Sins and American Values

H
ow did we get here?

When we imagine the kind of life we dream of living, what images come to mind? When we envision our most beautifully perfect day, what do we dream we are doing? Who is with us, what are the feelings or experiences we yearn for, how would we fill our day?

Many of us might describe essentially similar qualities in our one, sufficient day. We would speak of love, or of being loved, of being seen and known, appreciated for just who we are. Perhaps we crave a sense of intrinsic value, knowing that we matter, that our lives, our work, our presence and companionship are important to others, to the world, perhaps even to God. We may imagine the beauty of nature, listening to music, or sharing a meal with friends or loved ones. We may take delight in the countless pleasures of being alive in our body and, at the end of the day, find peace and contentment in the easy sufficiency of a day well lived.

These beautiful, sacred blessings of life are universally cherished in the human heart, just as they are common and unremarkable in their simplicity. And they each require a great deal of time, care, and attention if they are to take root and flourish in our lives. But the distractions and worries of the
world are doggedly persistent, and before long we may find ourselves trading away our days and our dreams, already committing ourselves again and again to so many tasks and responsibilities—with just as many fears about how we will accomplish them all—that we despair of ever living even this one, most elegantly gentle day.

When we are increasingly drained, pressed for time, and afraid we may never taste these simple gifts or blessings of nourishment, we are inclined to grasp for some substitute. We are more easily seduced by certain behaviors or possessions that promise to give us not precisely what we dreamed, but something that looks close enough. Most importantly, it is always the thing we can get easier, cheaper, and faster, in an increasingly busy life—in the bone-weary ache of our exhausted heart—and this kind of swift comfort can become irresistible.

These faster, quicker, easier versions of love, satisfaction, sufficiency, or peace are in some faith traditions called
sins
. In the late sixth century, Roman Catholic Pope Gregory produced a list, later known as the Seven Deadly Sins, which included pride, envy, gluttony, lust, greed, anger, and sloth.

These sins were originally condemned by the church as offenses against God. But for our purposes, I have no concern whether one is religious or not, whether one believes in heaven, or hell, or penance for indulging in these sins. However, I believe it is extraordinarily useful for us to understand the spiritual physics that make these sins attractive in the first place. Here again, our curiosity about sin is not driven by whether or not it will send us to hell. The most important aspect of these sins is this: They just don’t work. More often than not, they just make things worse.

Pride, for example, rarely makes us feel authentically important. Greed does not grant us deep satisfaction or contentment with what we have accumulated. Gluttony does not evoke a sense of being pleasantly satiated. Envy of others cannot possibly make us feel more complete, whole, or beloved. Lust cannot give us any feeling of being truly loved or cherished in our bodies and hearts. Anger does not give us any lasting, authentic feeling of being powerful or courageous. And sloth—defined by Saint Thomas Aquinas as
a refusal of joy, a sadness in the face of spiritual good—
merely causes us to give up hope in the blessings of a human life, and we refuse to believe we will ever find rest, renewal, or delight.