The primacy of practice

“I am the same kind of moron as the rest of you, it’s the method that does the work, for me as well as for you.”

—Alfred Korzybski

I’ve read, achieved and learned a lot over the years. But it is my ongoing practices that have had by far the biggest impact on my life.

We readily accept that mastery in music, sport & art comes from years of practice, but still balk at applying the same method to our inner life.

Training attention, compassion, or presence is often seen as innate or indulgent, not a discipline. Yet inner fluency is built the same way as any other craft: with practice. This opens many doors to experiencing reality more fully and accurately.

Practice and ritual were once an integral part of daily life. Or to put it another way: every culture but ours has been glued together through ritual. For better or worse, there is very little ritual left, unless we join communities that offer it or build our own practices.

I believe the primacy of practice is an idea whose time has come again. At a time when people are frothing at the potential of getting immediate answers to any questions with zero effort, it’s more important than ever to defend practice.

My thesis is that practice is not only foundational to a life well-lived, but that understanding why practice is essential tells us something critical about human nature.

So what is practice? It is to continually return to something, in order to improve or grow. The continual nature is crucial: it’s something we come back to, again and again.

But why would we need to do that? Because we forget. We get distracted. We see only part of the picture. We fail to maintain the relationship.

Practice is a second-class citizen in a society that prioritises scientific truth. But as John Vervaeke points out, this standard of truth does little to counter self-deception—the many ways we know what’s right, and continue to do otherwise.

We have to train to recognise what’s of value, and even more importantly, to become intimately familiar with what pulls us away from it.

The Good Life is not about seizing upon the right beliefs or the truth. It’s about braiding life with an ecology of practices that keep us tapped into the perennial wellsprings of our well-being. Whether that’s meditation, phone-free family meals, worship or gardening.

This is not to leave truth behind, but to re-affirm that wisdom is always truth plus transformation; that truth always changes us in some way.