Learning may be a pleasurable spiritual practice

Reading Monk by Odilon Redon

Spirituality & Health magazine offers Thomas Moore’s September-October column, "The Spiritual Practice of Study" for online reading. Moore writes:

"In my spiritual life, study is perhaps my most important practice. It’s my way of remaining a monk. And I’m worried that it isn’t more widely prized and practiced. If there is one thing I find lacking in the spirituality I come across in my travels, it’s a studied intelligence and sharp wit about things of the spirit. Some of my academic friends don’t like the word spirituality, because spirituality is so often full of emotionalism ― emotion without an intelligence.

I admit that study doesn’t seem a very sexy way to be spiritual, and yet I know that there is deep pleasure to be found in good language and exciting ideas. When I’m away from home I yearn to get back to my desk and library and open up a book on, say, some obscure figure in the Italian Renaissance that has a world to reveal to me."

He urges readers to lose themselves and find themselves in the pleasures of learning. You may enjoy Moore's column from November-December 2009, "Shades of Truth" in which he explores the notion of spiritual sentimentality.