My father was an engineer by profession but a gourmet chef by hobby. He loved to cook and in particular, to create amazing dishes from scratch relying not on a recipe but on his own sense of flavors. His mouth was like a chemical analysis laboratory. Give him a taste of something, and he could tell you the ingredients, the spices that may have been used, the proportions of one thing versus another. He was a virtuoso of the kitchen.
I inherited none of that talent. In fact, I have virtually no sense of smell—never have had—and thus a diminished sense of taste. When it comes to fine dining, as long as I have ketchup, I’m good! Still, I loved watching my dad cook, seeing his delight at producing something wonderful, and I always enjoyed whatever he concocted.
I got to thinking about this when I read something this past month about the importance of having a spiritual path in these challenging times. This is a sentiment with which I would agree, but the author’s definition of a “spiritual path” was different from my own. He was thinking of something formal, a tradition that had its own beliefs, practices, rituals, and so on, all of which would provide a place of comfort and relief from the buffeting of world events. It was as if there was a “daily path” that we walked while doing our work and attending to our affairs and then there was a “spiritual path” that could take us out of the world for a time, allowing us to renew and refresh ourselves.
I think having practices that renew and refresh are important, but my idea of a spiritual path is different. In thinking about this difference, I got to thinking about my father in the kitchen. For him, cooking was about combining the main ingredients such as meat, vegetables, grains, and so forth with spices. Dad knew how to cook the main ingredients, but it was in knowing and choosing just the right spices and their combination that his talent shone. He had a large rack of spices, and he knew precisely how and when to use each one to get the effect he desired. For him, spices weren’t the meal—you still needed the main ingredients—but they made the meal and transformed it into something special and unforgettable.
This is what a spiritual path is, for me. It is a collection of spices that can transform the ordinary fare of everyday activities into something special, something uplifting, something healing, something inspiring, something enriching. These “spices” are flavors like love, compassion, listening, respect, forgiveness, understanding, calmness, bravery, and so on. Life gives us plenty of opportunities to try any or all of these out. A spiritual path for me is having access to a spice rack of spiritual qualities and knowing which to use, when and how to make a moment shine with Light. Walking the spiritual path is really learning to cook in the kitchen of everyday life.
There are lots of recipes for how to live a spiritual life and act in a spiritual manner. It’s wonderful having recipes. I’m certainly not against them. In fact, you wouldn’t want to eat a meal I’d cooked unless you knew I’d followed a recipe. But life is unpredictable. We don’t always know what ingredients it’s going to present us or what the “kitchen” of the moment will be like. There may be no recipe for the situation in which we find ourselves, no “right way” to solve a problem or fulfill an opportunity. This is when we have to improvise with the spiritual spices we have, the qualities we’ve developed in ourselves.
My dad learned about spices by using them. I’m sure he made mistakes; not everything he cooked was always a gourmand’s delight. But he practiced tasting them and using them until the nature of the spice was part of who he was.
This is what we do with those qualities which we call “spiritual” but which are really the qualities that make us most human and enable us to create wholeness and joy in our world. We practice them in daily life with each other until they become part of us. We master the taste of joy, love, courage, compassion, trust, kindness, and so on by using them. Sure, we may make a mistake, but we learn how to make these qualities our own so that we can make them part of our world. We become gourmets of the soul.
It’s the spicy spiritual path!