Simplicity Part 1

August 4, 2026

Welcome to this week’s series of Daily Reflections on Simplicity.

Life…. It is simple. And yet, complex.

When I was a child, life did not seem as complex as it is in adulthood. I did not have many filters, theories, defenses, or philosophies. I mostly took things at face value. A tree was a friend. Kids were to play games with. Others were in charge and we kids followed the schedule. Parents loved you and protected you. A day was a day of adventure (if it was not raining). Things were usually what they appeared to be. Or at least, that is how I remember life being when I compare it to the complications of adulthood. 

As we look back, we think childhood was carefree and simple. But when we were children, we might have thought that things were quite complicated. After all, we were learning how to navigate the world, trying to understand it, trying to belong in it, trying out all our senses and emotions, and learning our bodies and their capacities. For example, when we look back on learning to tie our shoelaces, we may think that it was “a piece of cake.” Yet it could have been a major complication for us then. One thing remains constant: regardless of how we experienced our early childhood, it was lived more in soul than in any other state of being.

It had to be, because we had not developed our full ego, personality, or ways of moving in the world. We had only one basic identity—the soul we were born with. And wondrously, each soul is brimming over with spiritual superpowers that the ego eventually tries to keep under a crust in favor of its own powers. For that reason, the precious time we lived purely in soul is a time to remember and to re-inhabit. We free that time from its chamber under the crust, and the innate superpowers of our soul such as compassion, truthfulness, courage, sobriety, and equanimity express themselves more vibrantly.

As we grow older, life becomes layered— there are many “crusts.” We develop opinions, expectations, wounds, anxieties, responsibilities, and fears. We learn to protect ourselves. We learn to compare ourselves. We learn to worry. What once seemed direct becomes filtered through memory, ambition, loss, fear, anxiety, disappointment, and desire. The ego and superego take shape, and the shadow rests beneath it all. 

This is why we often hear people say, “Things were much simpler way back then.” But if we think about it, “way back then” is a different era for different age groups. 

So, for me, the 1950s and 1960s were my “way back then.” But if I asked my parents if that era was “simple,” for them, they would say no— it was a time of dealing with life at its high point of stressful challenges. As children, while we were playing in the yard, they were paying the bills, carrying the grief, making the decisions, and wondering how to negotiate the labyrinth of life.

So, I believe simplicity is not really about going back to another time in history—some idealized era when nobody locked their doors, and all was right with the world. Simplicity may be more about another way of being even in a world of extreme complications. It may mean a return to what is essential, to the essence of who we are without the heavy trappings that complicate life so much. It may mean living from soul, more than any other state of being. 

My father-in-law, Lamar Dill, was a man who looked at life through the lens of simplicity. He was a model for me, a person who saw and lived what was essential. I had the honor of interviewing him for a short film we made on Consciousness and Essence. Here is an excerpt from that exchange:

Joe: Lamar, you are in your late eighties now. Over a lifetime you must have learned many things about life. Can you tell us some of those things?

Lamar Dill: I have learned a lot, and I could sit here all day and tell you about them. But if I put it simply, it all boils down to love.

Those words echo into my heart a lot since Lamar said them. They are simple, yet profound. No spiritually wise one, at any level of wisdom, would take issue with that one statement. Love is the answer to all quandaries, circumstances, and strivings. It is simple.

Spiritual Practice

Describe your life in a few sentences, in the simplest of terms. Write the description and take in its meaning. 

Inquiry

What are some reasons that you think things get so complicated? 

Prayer

Dear God, As I contemplate simplicity, I ask for the gift of looking at life in terms of what really matters.

Amen