Five-Minute Spirituality Videos

Great teachers from the early Christians to Oprah favorites all endorse contemplative spirituality as--as the recent Archbishop of Caterbury put it--“not just one thing [spiritual people] do, but the key to prayer, art, and a renewed humanity.” Here’s how to get started.

Evolution--or the devil!--has programmed you and me to have a bias towards negative, unhappy thoughts. Here’s wisdom from some Trappist monks about how to move into a new, happier world.

Meditation often gets described as not one, but three separate things: concentration, mindfulness and loving kindness. That second one, mindfulness, gets credited as a central way to keep our hearts open to the life that’s happening right now. Here’s how not to miss out on what’s right in front of you.

More than ever, most of us wonder how we could be so different from other, evidently-also-spiritual people. Great thinkers tell us about the importance of knowing four different gravitational centers of spirituality: chaotic, rules-based, skeptical and journeying. Many people find this to be an eye-opener.

Getting spiritually still by way of contemplative spirituality is a game changer. But many of us also long for what the French monk Brother Lawrence called a two-way conversation with God. Here’s how you can have both.

Spiritual masters tell us that, by nature, we’re all reactive, almost like raw nerve endings that have a flinch response to everything that comes our way. But we dream of the kind of flow that monks call “being pure of heart” and some mystics call “enlightenment.” Here’s a look at the road there.

Spiritual progress requires stillness and learning to let things go. But that’s not to say we don’t have actual things we actually need. A Welsh revivalist proposed a provocative way to keep both of these things in view.

You and I both think there’s something we’ve been made to do, that would be satisfying and fruitful. But the trick is figuring out what that is and doing it. Here are thoughts from one contemplative teacher on pulling that off, while not sacrificing enjoying what you have right now.

Contemplative spirituality is the best thing ever apart from one small problem: everyone is terrible at it. But the good news is that the masters started off just as horrible as you feel--and then it all got good.

Desperately trying to hold onto good things while simultaneously trying to fend off possible bad things is human--and saps the joy of living. Contemplative spirituality invites a flow that makes life easier and more alive.