Balance Between Experience and Spirit for Lasting Happiness

What You’ll Discover in This Article

• Why balancing life’s experiences and spiritual growth is the key to lasting inner peace

• A simple model that explains how emotions arise from values and relationships.

• Four practices that can release emotional weight and uncover inner happiness.

• Four experiential daily habits that bring vitality, creativity, and joy to life.

• How combining both sides creates true harmony - with a glimpse of my personal journey.

The Need for Balance

Many people today are suffering unnecessarily. Not only because of life’s difficulties, but because they carry the weight of lingering emotions. Every event leaves behind a trace: joy, pain, disappointment, or longing. 

These impressions accumulate, sometimes even across lifetimes according to spiritual traditions, and act like a sheath around our inner essence.

Underneath all this, our natural state is peace and happiness. But to uncover it, we need to understand why balance is essential.

Achieving balance between experiential and spiritual life can be challenging

Why we Carry Emotional Weight

Every experience leaves an emotional residue. Over time, these accumulate and influence how we see the world, sometimes even creating blocks that prevent us from feeling joy. We chase experiences endlessly, believing they will bring happiness. 

Or we reject the world entirely in search of spirit. 

Both approaches miss the mark. Real freedom comes when we can embrace life’s experiences, while not being trapped by them.

Experience and Spirit: Two Sides of Life

The Richness of Experiential Living

Life is full of beauty, challenge, and discovery. Experience gives us the raw material for growth, it’s arguably the very reason we exist here.

The Essence of Spiritual Practice

Spiritual practice doesn’t mean rejecting experience. It means learning to digest and release its emotional impact, so our inner light isn’t buried under layers of impressions.

A Model for Understanding Emotional Impact

Imagine a simple graph:

Y-axis: Alignment with your values (0 = aligned, 10 = against).

X-axis: Closeness of the person involved (0 = stranger, 10 = loved one).

An action that clashes with your values will create emotion and the closer a person is the higher the emotional intensity.

Why emotion is higher with those closest to us

We can more easily shrug off the behavior of a stranger. But when someone we love acts against our values, the emotional charge can feel overwhelming. 

Note that the person closest to us could be ourself. We occasionally have done things outside our current values which can have a lasting emotional impact.

By understanding that emotions arise from value differences and relational closeness, we can step back and observe our reactions. This recognition alone is a practice of acceptance.

Four Opportunities for Inner Freedom

1. Acceptance

Life brings countless events outside of our control. Acceptance helps us stop clinging to resistance, so emotions lose their power to take root.

The values / closeness model above, reminds us not to jump straight to the most challenging situations. Acceptance is a skill. Start with the smaller emotional impacts, the “middle zones” and build resilience over time.

2. Gratitude

By practicing gratitude, even in small ways, we soften the heart and open ourselves to the hidden beauty in ordinary life.

3. Letting Go

Memories bind us through the emotions attached to them. Letting go gently cleanses us of these attachments, helping us to live more lightly in the present.

4. Meditation

Meditation deepens awareness and dissolves layers of ego and impressions. It’s not about escaping life but refining how we experience it.

The practices of acceptance, gratitude, letting go and meditation are not abstract ideals. They are practical tools to reconnect with our inner peace

Associated Practices

Acceptance: Recognise the emotion within you during the circumstance that has arisen. Pause, then remind yourself, “This is outside my control, and that’s okay.” Have faith that the emotion will pass and a reaction is not needed, then let it dissolve. 

Begin with small annoyances and gradually tackle more challenging situations.

Gratitude: Reflect daily on three things you are grateful for. Notice small moments throughout the day: a smile, a walk in the sun and consciously appreciate them.

Letting Go: When a memory triggers emotion, pause, take a long outbreath and breathe gently. Acknowledge the feeling and try to avoid the temptation to push the emotion back where it came from. Then visualise releasing it, like a breeze passing through you with mist carrying the emotional imprint backwards. Over time, this becomes natural.

Meditation: Start with 1 or 2 minutes of quiet sitting, focusing on the breath. If this feels challenging then use another "single pointed attention" technique which resonates with you.

Gradually increase the time and, if it feels appropriate, explore heart-centered practices. Thoughts will arise, acknowledge them and return to your breath. Consistency matters more than duration.

Small steps to begin with

You don’t need to make dramatic changes. Start with moments in your day where they can be gently practiced.

The Experiential Side: Four Daily Habits

While the spiritual practices free us from the weight of experience, the experiential side allows us to live fully. Years ago, I discovered four principles to guide daily living:

Learn something new

Curiosity keeps the mind alive.

Do something creative

Creativity channels our inner spark into form.

Move your body

Physical activity strengthens not only the body but also resilience and clarity.

Make space for joy

Fun and play open the heart and remind us of life’s lightness.

Research shows how exercise can lift mood, build resilience and reduce stress (see my article “mental health and fitness”)

These practices don’t have to be separated. A bike ride, for example, might give exercise, spark creativity through new ideas, teach you something about nature, and be deeply fun, all at once.

Closing Reflection

Life is not about choosing between worldly experience and spiritual depth, but in balancing both. Our daily activities give us vitality, creativity, and joy, while spiritual practices help us release the emotional weight of those very experiences. Like the two sides of a scale, each supports and steadies the other. 

When both are honored, life becomes lighter, freer, and more deeply fulfilling, a dance between living fully and living freely.

True growth comes when we balance the weight of experience with the freedom of spirit

My Personal Journey

From experiential obsession and physical discipline to inner practice.

Fitness training and subsequently coaching, taught me discipline and resilience. They prepared the ground for deeper practices.

What meditation revealed

Meditation showed me how little control I truly had and how much freedom comes from allowing rather than resisting.

How my own principles guided me

The four experiential habits started as my own guiding principles. Over time, I realised that I also needed to balance with spiritual practices, creating a complete model for living.

For me, the body prepared the ground, but the heart showed me how to live. 

Most people find meditation intimidating at first, that’s why I present it last, after the three other practices that can already support the heart and mind.

Scientific Support

While the reflections and practices shared here come from lived experience and  spiritual guidance / traditions, they are also strongly supported by modern research in psychology, neuroscience, and well-being studies:

Meditation and Mindfulness

Long-term practice reshapes the brain: reducing reactivity in the amygdala (stress center) and strengthening the prefrontal cortex (self-regulation and clarity). Tang, et al., 2015; PMC review.

Meta-analyses show different meditation styles (focused attention, loving-kindness, open monitoring) have measurable and distinct brain activation patterns, highlighting the depth of its impact. Dahl et al., 2016; arXiv.

Acceptance

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) has demonstrated significant benefits in helping people regulate emotions and live with greater balance. Trials have shown ACT improves emotional regulation in adolescents and patients with chronic illness. Hayes et al., 2006; PMC.

Neuroscience research also finds unique brain network signatures in people skilled at acceptance practices. arXiv.

In psychological terms, this echoes Steve Peters’ Chimp Paradox model, recognizing that our emotional reactions often originate from an instinctive part of the mind, which we can soothe and manage rather than war with. 

Gratitude

Studies show that keeping gratitude journals or writing letters of appreciation significantly increases happiness and reduces depression, with effects lasting weeks to months. Emmons & McCullough, 2003; Wikipedia summary.

Positive psychology research highlights gratitude as one of the most reliable practices for increasing well-being and resilience. Seligman, 2002; Wikipedia summary.

Further Reading

Bryant, E. F. (2009). The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali: A new edition, translation, and commentary. North Point Press.

Patel, K. D., & Pollock, J. (2018). The Heartfulness way: Heart-based meditations for spiritual transformation. Inner Traditions.

Peters, S. (2012). The chimp paradox: The mind management programme to help you achieve success, confidence and happiness. Vermilion.

Ruiz, D. M. (1997). The four agreements: A practical guide to personal freedom. Amber-Allen Publishing.

Singer, M. A. (2007). The untethered soul: The journey beyond yourself. New Harbinger Publications.