Exercise, from Latin exercitium, "training, physical workout," applied to soldiers, horse riders, ...
In the Christian Bible, a passage that has encouraged me, which I was introduced to in my youth, appears in 1st Timothy. The writer is encouraging a young pastor in the latter half of the 1st Century, Timothy: "Have nothing to do with profane and foolish tales. Train yourself in godliness" (NRSVUE). A more contemporary version: "Don't waste time arguing over foolish ideas and silly myths and legends. Spend your time and energy in the exercise of keeping spiritually fit" (TLB). In this scripture, the Greek word γύμναζε (gumnaze) can read "exercise, training, discipline."
One trains to develop "godliness," to be "spiritually fit." And one of the significant failures of the Christian church, as an example, has been not doing this well: teaching how to be spiritually fit beyond church doctrine and ethical ideals. My past experience in the church leads me to conclude it generally does little to nothing more than this. There are exceptions.
Whatever the wisdom path, spiritual fitness is much more than correct beliefs and good behavior. That is elementary, even if important. And, as well, if one does not evolve beyond this into a postconventional (beyond the norm, generally accepted) spirituality (worldview), beliefs and behaviors will be limited by conventional groupthink.
From preconventional (prior to the norm, not generally accepted, instinctual, lacking intelligence and morality based on empathy) to conventional (the norm, fits well in the society and group) worldviews, one does not embrace the freedom to think or act outside the authority of others. Yet, spiritual fitness training can fit one to live from self-action and self-thinking, hence self - not egoic - agency. And not in rebellion against anything, but in integrity (wholeness, undividedness, harmony). To do this, one can accept those who are still in the preconventional or conventional stages, but often those in those stages see the more evolved as a threat, a heretic, to be avoided or demeaned. The post-conventionalists are a threat, a threat to both the ills of conservatism and liberalism, and by their insights and actions being a challenge, for they do not fit anywhere, while able to integrate anywhere needed to manifest higher consciousness for the good of others.
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Postconventional beings are beings of sacred insight and all-embracing compassion, able to receive wisdom and help other beings - not just humans - without being controlled by the ideals and dictates of any one group. Their life is devoted to the blessing of others - again, not just humans - not the conversion of others to their way. They may appear so normal, and they are "so normal," as not to appear set apart in any way. They may be in a religion or spirituality, or not. Post-conventional is the absolutely normal, not the norm. Post-conventional is humanness to an elevated degree, not the transcendence of humanness. These beings do not have to suppress pleasure and desire, they lift such to reflect the Good, True, and Beautiful. And, yes, they have human foibles - they are not icons of some idealistic perfection. They are not know-it-alls, they are teachable. They may appear in a bar or a church or on a playground or in a hospital or on a sports team - anywhere they need or want to. They may be native born or an immigrant. They may be straight, gay, bi, trans, ... black, brown, white, red, yellow... small, medium, large size. Spirit seems to enjoy arraying itself in a very broad array of disguise.
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Regarding stages. One could claim this is elitist. In every field of endeavor, however, there are persons at differing points of development and enactment. So, as there are elites in science, sports, music, acting, cooking, poetry, art ... there are in spirituality. A football player, to be elite, engages in a practice to be elite; so, in the spiritual life. We are all equal, yet we are not all equal in degree of development or capability.
Furthermore, "stages" can be misleading, for they are not so clearly defined in experience; that is, one does not move from one stage to another like stepping on a ladder a step at a time. A toddler does not just get up from crawling and start walking around the house. The child falls, gets up, falls again, gets up... . For a time, the child is both in crawling and walking stages, and, when an adult, that past child can still crawl and lie down. They never leave those stages behind, but they do not remain fully in them, either - otherwise, we would see adults crawling around everywhere, and some maybe lying around everywhere. However, for this writing, I will use the concept of stages.
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A turning point for me came one day, standing in my college apartment in Graceville, FL. The early 80s. I had been athletic in my youth and had started running some. During high school, I went to the track one day and had never run more than a mile, and a mile only once. I ran two miles with the track team. Soon, I looked back, and the star distance runner for the team, and everyone else, was far, far behind me. The track coach was quite surprised. I was, too.
How this? Not due as much to prior running, which I had done little of, as to the farming life, with its laborious work, and playing basketball until the dark led me inside. Also, I was raised with an encouragement from the Christian Scriptures. The Bible informed me the body is a temple of holy Spirit. I was committed to caring for and respecting that temple. Exercise was one way to do so, as well as avoiding other teen habits not conducive to self-care.
The shift that transpired in that apartment is one of those crossroads in life where you turn left or turn right. I stood there, admitting to myself how I had not been consistent in my running, which I had become my principal form of exercise. I asked myself, "Are you going to keep with it, or not?" I was tired of not doing it consistently.
I stepped out of the apartment and began running, right then. From that day, I ran for twenty years. I did not jog, I ran. I ran consistently, even while in seminary working part-time, serving as assistant to my post-graduate professor, attending seminars, and reading, researching, and writing into the morning hours at my desk to complete Ph.D. studies. That day in the apartment was a beginning, a resolution.
After no longer being able to run, I got a bike and began cycling. I open-road cycled for a decade.
After this, as I moved to Maine, I began walking and indoor cycling. I have continued this to today.
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Someone recently surprised me when exercise came into our conversation. After telling them about my exercise routine, they replied: "You mean you still exercise?" I said I do. I knew by "still" the person meant at my age. People much older than I exercise. I live in the oldest county in Maine, and people well beyond my age, 65, are out exercising. I plan to exercise as long as this temple allows it.
Exercise is not just about the body, however. An integral approach to exercise includes the whole self-system: body, mind, soul, spirit. Body pertains to the physical. Mind to the intellectual. Soul to the devotional. Spirit includes the other three, and the other three arise from Spirit. The first three are manifestations of Spirit. The journey is Spirit to Spirit.
Another way of looking at this is our exercising to awaken and keep open three Eyes: the Eye of Flesh, the Eye of Mind, the Eye of Spirit. Here, I interpret "soul," the devotional, as arising in Body and Mind and serving as a bridge to Spirit. Devotional spirituality, or religiousness at the soul level - a stage, a station of development - is a step before what could be narrowly defined as a spiritual life. Spirituality encompasses the entire movement from Flesh to Mind to Spirit, however. While including the Eye of Flesh and the Eye of Mind in Spirit, how we experience them is transformed in union with Spirit. And in the Eye of Spirit, we have evolved from matter to Subtle.
Most people, however, get stuck in mind, and many never make it that far, being located, so acting, as only a body. Some never get out of intellectual into devotional, while others get stuck in the devotional. The intent is to integrate development at the "highest," or "subtlest," level (embrace, emergence, evolution), so as not to get grounded before and claim that is the height of spiritual emergence. Likewise, one cannot skip any developmental station, any more than one can climb a tree before learning to stand on one's two feet.
An apostle, Paul, in the Christian Bible, speaks of Spirit as, "In Him, we live, move, and have our being." The "Him" is one way of pointing to this Ineffable - "Her" or "It" would work. Each wisdom path has its vocabulary for this Unspeakable, and it can all be divided between two ways: anthropomorphic, abstract. Spirit is neither. We have nowhere to fit Spirit in our languages. If one says "Him" or "Father" or "Mother" or "Great Spirit" or the "Godhead" or "the Good, True, and Beautiful" or "Dharmakaya" or "Buddha" or "Brahman" or "Allah" or "the Way" or "Consciousness"... so be it - whatever works. And what works for us may change over time, and it will, if we keep evolving spiritually.
Everything changes as we grow toward union with Spirit, which is, also, our deepest Self: what I often call True Nature. Nothing remains the same.
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At this point, one could say, "Wow! This sounds heady. I can never grow to such an elevated height." We can all evolve. It is challenging, but it is not complicated. I will share a Buddhist koan to address this, informing us where to begin and hinting at how -
A monk asked Yunmen, “What is every-atom concentration?” Yunmen replied, “A bowl of rice and a bucket of water.”
"Every-atom concentration" was based on a theory, derived from ancient India, of minute, invisible-to-the-eye particles within matter. We could render the monk's query: "What is the highest one can attain in the spiritual life?" or "What is the last and grandest stage of meditation?"
Yunmen, we might expect, would give an abstract, idealistic answer. He provides a concrete, everyday one. Where do we begin? What is all this like? It is as simple as what is right before us: the tea we drink, the vehicle we drive, the things we do to care for our house and our yard, the person we love and make love with, and our bodies. We evolve from Spirit to Spirit by attending to and working with our lives in this body, place, and time.
Korean Buddhist, Matthew Juksan Sullivan put it nicely, in the Garden of Flowers and Weeds -
Yunmen isn’t peering into the ... holographic universe or staring into the boundless void. He’s just looking down and seeing what’s in front of him. What is there? Not much. Some rice and water. But if that’s all he’s got, that’s what he must work with. As he said to his monks on another occasion, “A coin that’s lost in the river is found in the river.”
Hence, we do not have to rush to grow spiritually, trying to dash toward Spirit. Spirit is already fully here. We can relax in our practice, which includes all life, not a special section set aside as spiritual. We can engage in simple practices, not trying to elevate into some transcendent state, not aiming to have visions and hear voices, not interested in being seen as a mystic or a buddha, a saint or a sage, enlightened or holy.
Yes, "transcendent" experiences can arise, but do not take them too seriously. They pass. They are experiences. Spirit is the non-experience, yet experiences.
Then, we are simply growing into the human beings we can be, both feet on the ground, entirely in the body, increasing in wisdom and compassion. And Eye of Spirit does not mean there is an end to this emergence or the need to exercise ourselves to develop our sacred humanness further. And Spirit does not mean leaving our bodies and minds behind, denying their enjoyments and needs. - Pleasure is important, all along the Way. Intellectual exploration is important all along the Way. - And it does not mean abandoning our devotion, which we express through rituals of worship, public or private, and through the love and respect we express to other beings. In saying this, our way of practice will differ among us. What works, works. Whatever our path is, we need to enjoy it - even though there will be challenging times. Enjoyment, not discontent, struggle, strain, and guilt, is the way of the Way.
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Conservatism and liberalism often do not encourage maturation beyond mind - this trait they share. How? Conservativism tends to integrate mind - as dogma - and devotion - as worship. Liberalism tends to throw out Spirit, overcompensating with mind, as social ideals, with its social activism, and devotion being absent. Hence, the answer to our social upheavals, based on conservative and liberal, or left and right, would best be addressed by honoring the strengths of both, each not clinging to their own strengths while throwing barbs at the other.
I mention this because it applies to a person's spiritual development - it is not private. Our spiritual development is linked with the collective. One motivation for spiritual fitness is to be one person able to make at least a slight difference in the collective by maintaining a path integrating wisdom and compassion at more subtle, more embracing stations. To do this requires the evolution of consciousness, whereby we see and experience the world differently than prior.
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Even as I decided that day decades ago to commit myself to running, knowing it required that kind of resolve, the same is true for the totality of ourselves. We need to do this exercise, whatever we call it. Some Buddhists refer to "skillful means." For Soto Zen Buddhists, the term "zazen," referring literally to sitting meditation, includes the entirety of a way of life, with all its practices, no division between spiritual and profane, sacred and secular, on the cushion or off the cushion. Christians often refer to spiritual disciplines and a "Rule of Life," which consists of a set of practices. We hear of "spiritual practice" or "practices." Again, whatever we call it, whatever we include, to do this requires intention and consistency.
The Benedictine tradition, in Christian monasticism, speaks of "tools" to grow ourselves. If we use the tools, skillful means, we will grow to "places" we did not know possible for us. We will expand into insight beyond the intellectual and compassion beyond the psychological. And, this potential is all already right here, now. You and I already have the Eye of Spirit as potential, even as we have the Eye of Flesh and Eye of Mind. We do not need to get anything. Spirituality is about engaging skillful means to uncover the potentials innate to us; yes, often forgotten, rarely encouraged, seldom even believed in, but no less present and waiting to manifest in our daily lives.
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In conclusion, I cannot tell anyone what the Eye of Spirit means. We learn each emergence, each station on the Way, by living the Way. Rick Rubin, writing in his The Creative Act, about creating art, says, "The work reveals itself as you go." Spirituality is a way of art. Trusting the process, we do not seek to understand before we experience. We evolve, and nonconceptual understanding arises naturally, effortlessly. Yet, the work to make space for this takes effort. We have to exercise ourselves, and when we would rather not.
Thankfully, the fruit of our growth encourages us to enjoy the work and remain assured more life-enhancing fruition is always to come. We are built for development and the fruition that follows our intentional openness, from matter to Spirit, preconventional to postconventional, prepersonal to postpersonal - integrating, not leaving behind anything that has unfolded within us that self-illumines for the common good. As Rubin writes, "[W]e function ... as instrumentalists in a much larger symphony." Spirituality, as art, is Spirit creating an ever-evolving masterpiece, unique to each of us, through us.
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(C) brian wilcox, 2026
*The three eyes and much of this writing is based on readings from Ken Wilber (The Eye of Spirit, Sense and Spirit, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, A Theory of Everything, The Simple Feeling of Being, An Integral Psychology, One Taste) works I studied over two decades ago and has shaped my worldview since. Hence, while I do not quote him, his thought was key to this writing, for it has been key to my life.
