In response to my exploration of the principle of commitment as a tenet of life practice, I have been experimenting with different methods of practicing commitment. As I mentioned in Commitment Is Everything, we have a very poor understanding of commitment. We really only understand one dimension of the act, which is that of binding oneself unequivocally to some (usually poorly-defined) thing. Such a shallow approach renders the act ineffective and failure-prone. If we are to strive to live a life of integrity, we must understand what it truly means to practice commitment.
Commitment Is Empty
Despite prevailing winds, I don't believe commitment has any intrinsic virtue. It is the historical tendency of religion to encourage or even demand a lifelong commitment to everything that the church represents as a condition of entry. But what does that do for the adherent? It elevates the commitment above the virtue that should be practiced and it places great importance on being right. So living the commitment becomes more about protecting the correctness of the object of commitment than about the spiritual practice itself. Given that this commitment is either indoctrinated or prerequisite for conversion, this means that it is mostly untrained egos entering into these commitments. It's like sending children to war. (We do that too). No wonder religion is the source of so much division and violence; so many people never have a chance to get to the real practice because they're immediately forced onto the defensive by the nature of a commitment made believing that there is virtue in commitment itself.
Commitment is empty; empty of virtue, empty of self nature as the Buddhists would say. It exists only in relation to other things, and is only from the friction between those things that virtue can emerge. Commitment is an empty yoke, useless unless it binds the right animal to the right tool. I can yoke a cat to a sewing machine, but what good will it do me? I can yoke an ox to a plow, and that could help feed my family. Not bad. So in the context of spiritual practice, what am I yoking and to what should I yoke it?
Commitment Is Meditation
Commitment is much more than simply accepting an obligation. It is a practice which serves to align and bind mind, emotion, and action. That is, it is a form of living meditation. In mediation, we practice quieting the mind, settling the emotions, and stilling the body to find the authentic self and dwell in oneness and knowing of enlightenment. And while we may seek it for the blissful state it brings, it is also fundamentally a developmental activity because it increases our contact and awareness of the authentic self and teaches discrimination between ego and that authentic self. The goal is that this ability will thereby increase in daily life, enlightened meditation leading to enlightened life -- a life lived in harmony with the perspective and concerns of the always enlightened, always caring self.
And in that sense, commitment is a living meditation. Whereas meditation is like going to the gym in order to make oneself stronger outside the gym, commitment is like engaging in life so vigorously that daily activity demands as well as creates that strength. As I said, commitment aligns and binds the mind, the emotions and the body. But rather than stilling them, it brings them into a state of active engagement with life. It is not a retreat into nondual isolation (as blissful as that may be); it is a creative union with the world of form in a singular focus.
Commitment Is Living Enlightenment
This is what makes commitment an ideal spiritual practice for our era. Our evolved enlightenment has to be about engaging with the world from an enlightened perspective, not about retreating from the world into an isolated sphere of individual bliss while the world crumbles around us. Gandhi said, "Be the change you want to see in the world." The world that we need -- the world that doesn't abandon its poor, its hungry, its suffering -- can only be created by changing culture, and that cannot be done from a cushion. It can only be done by acting in the world from the perspective of the enlightened, always caring self. But we cannot wait for a mystical transformation that comes after years of meditation. We must become the change now and every moment.
And that is what makes commitment a powerful spiritual practice. It directly affects change by its very nature. It's not a practice that you perform in the quiet of the morning and hope that some bit of it lasts until the kids are in bed; it is not a practice that promises transformation at some future point. It is a practice of actively and constantly transforming yourself into the ideals and perspective of enlightenment. The only enlightenment is enlightenment lived; when we practice commitment to live from the perspective of the always caring, not self-concerned, enlightened self, we become enlightenment and we bring enlightenment into the world all at once. And that happens because commitment doesn't say, "I'll do it tomorrow," or "I'll do it when I feel like it." Commitment. Does. It. Now. That may well be the only thing standing in our way of a new world.
