One thing clients want to work on when they hire me as their coach is their spiritual life. Often they tell me they have none, and when I inquire further, I find that they do, in fact, have a sort of spiritual practice, but it doesn't look like anything they recognize as such. For example, I work with a man who's a fly fisherman. Maybe three times a week, he goes to a park near his home after work and casts for about three hours. He describes the sense of peace and focus this gives him. He's surprised when I tell him that it sounds a lot like what all those folks who sit on little pillows say when they talk about their meditation practice.

My first formal meditation practice consisted of this: I would sit at my table with a cup of coffee, light a cigarette, and open a book to a passage I neither liked nor understood. The objective was to sit still for 5 minutes or so. Not many of us would consider this healthy spirituality, but it was better than nothing. Given what calls many of us to a spiritual life in the first place, health is a pretty tall order. Most people I know come to God under duress. We've driven our car into somebody's living room. We've been diagnosed with a life threatening disease. We've been thrown in jail for something we don't remember doing. Otherwise it wouldn't occur to us to pray, much less sit quietly and detach from our thought. In a moment of intolerable pain, we cry out to something—anything—out there in the great void, to help us.

We have no idea what we're getting into.

At that stage of the game, what most of us want from a spiritual life is assurance: a job; money in the bank; if not a relationship, at least getting laid once in a while. We want to do only what's necessary to maintain our comfort. But the deal seems to be if you cry out from the bottom of a pit, and help arrives, you are expected to hold up your end of a bargain you weren't even aware you'd made. It seems to involve continued spiritual growth and—what's worse—being of service to others. But all that came later.

I began by sitting at my table with coffee and a cigarette. A year or so later, I was on my knees, begging God not to destroy me that day. Believe it or not this was progress. My spiritual director suggested I take a look at my relationship to the Divine. My friend Dan told me to fire my Higher Power. So I did, and floated for another year or so in a sort of void. What I now see is that my experience of God had deepened and expanded enough to shatter my concept of God.

The point is I had to begin somewhere, and I began at a table. Today I still come to the table for a form of meditation: writing in my journal. Gone are the cigarettes, and the coffee has been replaced by green tea, but there I am again, watching my thought. This mode of journaling is a little different than other modes. I sit quietly for ten minutes or so, and then open my journal and write for 10 minutes. That's it. No agenda. I'm not reporting on what I did the day before or doing dream work or writing an unsent letter to someone I'm mad at, though all of those are possible. I simply follow my thought, which feels to me to be unlike writing at all, which is why I like it.

I am a writer for whom writing is hard, sweaty, physical work. Next to that, following my thought with a pen in my hand is a breeze. I'm curious. I can suspend judgment. I know I won't have to go back and revise anything. I have no deadline hanging over my head. Spending time with my journal in the morning leads me deeper into my feeling life. I become more honest with myself. I sink into a private voice and listen. I often come away with more insight into a troublesome question than I had when I sat down. In other words, though there is no real intention to it, I find it useful. Or the intention is simply to slow way down and BE, not do anything. It's easier for me than just sitting because I can keep my hand moving and fill a blank page with marks. So I still need some doing.

What I invite workshop participants and coaching clients to do is try it for a week or two and see what happens. Set a few simple guidelines, maybe set an egg timer, and dive in. But don't stop there. Start noticing where else spirit is showing up in your life. Like my client the fly fisherman, you might be surprised.

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