Building Your Spiritual House

In the Bible’s Book of Psalms we read this wise sentence: “Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain.” (Psalm 127:1). Is the Bible concerned about the construction of an actual house in this passage? Surely not. How do we know? Because God is not a licensed contractor. He is not in the house building business.

The question then becomes: What business is God in? So turning again to the scriptures, we read: “What is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?” (Psalm 8:4). Here we learn the business of the Lord. We learn that He is mindful of and cares for us human beings. One might say that He is mindful of us to the degree that this has become His primary concern. Therefore if God is in any business, it is the business of human life. This means that the house that the psalmist is speaking of is the life of an individual human being. Let us then paraphrase the building scripture thusly: Unless the Lord’s Spirit (consciousness) is in you, guiding your life and moving you along in the way you should go, you are probably pursuing a vain and futile course. Comparing your life’s choices and endeavors to the building of an actual house, you would be laboring in vain—that is to say, what you are doing will not endure; it will crumble in the sands of time; it will amount to nothing and ultimately be meaningless.

Another way to look at this is in light of karma. Karma is the law that governs our individual spiritual consciousness evolution. If we are making good headway in this evolutionary pursuit we are busy about a good, lasting work. The house we are building (our life experience) is coming along nicely, and our labors will be shown to not be in vain. Even if we do not reach the goal of Christ consciousness in this lifetime, our evolutionary expansion is incrementally saved and held over for our next life. As Jesus once portrayed in parabolic imagery, we are building our house on the rock, where the storms and floods of life on this earthly plane can no longer harm it (Matthew 7:24,25). But if in this life we are distracted by and busy with worldly, materialistic pursuits, our life-house will be weak and faulty. We will be building our house on shifting sands, so that when the wind and rain beat against it, it will be sure to fall. In karmic terms this means that we are basically ignoring our spiritual calling to evolve in consciousness, and after this life is over (after we have finished building this present house and witnessed its destruction) we will need to return to this plane and start all over again. Not only will we have failed to reach the goal, we also will have made no incremental progress to carry over from this life. Why? Because we had spent this lifetime laboring in vain. So this is a serious matter—one that we would do well to pay heed to.

Karma and instinct often intersect. So it is that many of us have instinctually responded to the wisdom of this teaching. We may not have understood exactly what it means to have the Lord build the house of our life, but on some level of consciousness we have felt the emptiness and vanity of this world’s allurements. This, in turn, caused us to take a more serious approach to life in general. In other words, we intuited that there was something more to life than the chasing of vanities. We may even have been led to a spiritual practice as a result of these instinctual dynamics. And so our life not only came to express a more serious outlook; it also took on a whole new direction and meaning. We reinvented ourselves, revamped our sense of identity, etc. In essence, we found ourselves building a whole new house—a house (life edifice) that now had all the wonders of spiritual practice as its main building materials. Does this mean that we then got on track with having the Lord build our house? Does the fact that we are now busy building our spiritual house automatically mean that we are finished with vanities forever? Unfortunately, it does not.

What many people do not realize is that it is entirely possible to still be laboring in vain, even while we give ourselves over to a spiritual practice. How can this be? Because like so many other spiritual realities, the way we build our new consecrated house-life is a matter of the heart. It is governed by subtle inward motivational impulses. So on the one hand we can be making great progress in our spiritual practice, while on the other hand still be laboring in vain in relation to our karma and spiritual consciousness evolution.

The bottom line is not how much time and effort we put toward spiritual practice; it is who is building our house. That is what the psalmist is trying to say. Unless the Lord builds the house, we labor in vain. And the hard truth is that many who are dedicated to a spiritual practice have not yet relinquished their former egoic role as house-builder. They may be highly successful in their spiritual work but they are still the ones building the house. Moreover our house cannot have multiple builders. So if we are still the builder we can be sure that the Lord is not. And if the Lord is not building it, we are still laboring in vain.

Thus the human ego once again shows its subtlety. It does not care if we are on a worldly path or a spiritual path. All it cares about is control, and that control can be subtle as well as prominent. As long as it retains its role as the builder of your life edifice it will be satisfied. And so this sneaky beast will probably not put up a fuss about your spiritual inclinations. Deceptively, it might even encourage you in your new directive. Why would it do that? Because it intuits that though you are being drawn to the spiritual life, you are not yet serious enough about your commitment to send it (ego) packing. That means that it can still be in control. It can still be the builder of the house.

But the deception does not stop there. The real problem is that if the ego is the one building your spiritual house it will most certainly set about building it in such a way that your commitment never gets serious enough to send it packing. Remember, the ego has plenty of experience at house building. It built the house you had when you were in the world. So now it simply employs a lot of the same techniques and tricks with your spiritual house. It keeps your focus on you—what you are getting out of your practice, how much progress you are making, how good you are feeling about yourself, and most especially how impressed others are with your new spiritual persona. It even makes suggestions for how to make your house super strong and beautiful. And so off you go, busily building and getting ahead in the spiritual life, and as this happens you also begin to reap the rewards of success in your new endeavor. These rewards may differ from the rewards you earned in the world (For example, instead of money and material possessions your new rewards may consist of respect, honor, and a position of influence in the spiritual community.). But remember the ego does not care about any of that. As long as it can continue to deceive you into letting it be the house builder, it will be as happy as a lark.

The point at which the ego begins to get worried is when your spiritual practice gives rise within you to a new love for purity and humility. Of course, sometimes this never happens, and that is why many of our spiritual communities are rife with colliding egoic energies. But sometimes one’s commitment manages to grow despite all of ego’s efforts to prevent that outcome. And when that happens one is often led into a new love for virtue, of which purity and humility are the most dangerous to ego. Why purity and humility? Because these two virtues, if left to flower into their ultimate expression, will not only threaten ego’s deceptive stranglehold; they will, in fact, put ego to flight forever.

A love for purity has the power to expose one’s subtle motivational discrepancies. In other words, though one may be climbing the ladder of spiritual success under ego’s agenda, suddenly this climb begins to look tainted and impure. All the respect and honor one has become accustomed to begins to reek of insincerity. And the high position one has attained in the community begins to feel meaningless.

But the real ego-killer is the onset of humility. Why? Because humility has a counterattack for every one of ego’s tricks. If ego has been prodding one to get ahead and focus on one’s own rewards, humility shoots that agenda down by suddenly showing a disdain for such behaviors. Ego has been promoting such behaviors as the ultimate building materials for your spiritual house—materials that will make it stronger and more beautiful than you ever dreamed of. But humility simply does not value such things, thereby causing one’s motivational impulse for attaining them to pretty much dry up. And if all of ego’s motivational mainstays dry up, then it knows that its time of control is close to being over. Its time of being the builder of your spiritual house is finished.

Besides having the power to undermine ego’s agenda, purity and humility also have a prominent role to play in the building of your new ego less spiritual house. This role involves opening the way for a new builder to take charge—the builder that the psalmist calls the Lord. The reason for this is that purity and humility are both Lord friendly. In contrast to the effect they had on ego, with purity and humility on the scene (and ego gone) the Lord knows that the way is now clear and conducive for Him to take over the building of your house. Thus purity and humility act like a welcoming banner—one that the Lord invariably sees and responds to. And when the Lord takes over this charge, vanity does indeed go out the window forever. We cease to labor in vain and instead build a spiritual house fit to endure for all eternity.

Another word for ego is I. And if I am the one building my spiritual house, guess what, all of my building efforts will prove to be in vain. Moreover, if I am the builder, then the Lord cannot be. There is no room in the human psyche for them both. But when ego is banished with the help of virtues such as purity and humility, not only is there now room for the Lord; there is a welcoming banner. In other words, this is the key to having the Lord take over. All we have to do is to change our former orientation and relinquish our egoic desire to be the builder.

Who then is this Lord? It is the infinite universal consciousness that created us. And how does He act on our behalf? According to law—law that was established in the beginning. And according to the law, when the human ego moves out, the Lord moves in. It’s as simple as that—no praying, begging, or trying to win favor with good deeds is necessary. When we (ego) stop building our house, the Lord takes over the job.

When our ego was the builder we labored in vain, whether the house we were working on was a worldly one or a spiritual one. This too was governed by universal law. Therefore there can be no denying it, even if appearances painted a different picture. But when we tired of ego’s deceptive ways and found the strength to put it to flight, the Lord came in and took over. And when that happened we ceased to labor in vain. Our spiritual house not only became vanity-free; it became glorious to behold.

And so we must not assume that since we are now on a spiritual course in our life the house we are building is automatically spiritually anointed and inviolably strong. That tiny controlling human force (our ego) must first be dealt with. It must be forcefully confronted with the virtues of purity and humility and told to leave. Then not only will our focus be spiritual; so will the house we build from that time forward. And that is the point when abundant life begins for us in earnest.