Why push through when you really don’t want to? Why subject yourself to boring, tiring meditations, repetitions, or contemplations? UGH. Why subject yourself to that? Yeah, I went through that today.

Guiding Thought

I remember my Self and recognize the Love within me, the Love I Am. I see this Love as all I am and all there is, the reality of me, the reality of you, and the reality that is the Life of All. I honor this Love and this Life, and offer my gratitude for Its Being. What Joy there is in Being!

Reflection

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.  –Eleanor Roosevelt

This quote came to mind as I have struggled today to start the Journey. The quote, in my mind was linked with 2 other thoughts:

A) When practicing the lessons from A Course in Miracles, there is a rule about “indiscriminant application” and the “essential rule of excluding nothing”. These means that all thoughts, objects, appearances are treated equally, and all things should be included (this maintains awareness about those things that you are inclined to avoid).

B) The importance of maintaining diligence especially when confronted with something I may be inclined to avoid (or exclude). In many traditions, there is an idea of doing a certain number of bows, or prostrations, repetitions of a prayer, etc. You see that here, too, with a 40-day cycle. In Tibetan Buddhism, there is a practice of doing 100,000 prostrations: lying on your belly, fully extended, standing back up, repeat, 100,000 times.  says this about maintaining diligence, when there is an inclination to avoid: In the book “The Guru Drinks Bourbon”, there is this lesson– “Then again, if you avoid doing prostrations because you think they are just for Tibetans or because the very idea of lying down and standing up one hundred thousand times exhausts you, you are deceiving yourself. In that case, you shouldn’t do one hundred thousand prostrations–you should do two hundred thousand.” (by Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche)

Let me put this all together for you…Eleanor + A + B =

In spiritual evolution, you must face your own ignorance. You come up against all of the things that are holding you back, and you know what they do? They try to hold you back. They do this by boring you, so you don’t see how exciting spiritual progress is; they do it by making you sleepy so you don’t want to think or meditate; they do it by numbing you to the effects of Life; they do it by suggesting that you avoid certain things (exclusion). This is why you MUST do spiritual practices; you must dedicate and commit, and then perform the practice, so that you are the boss of those things holding you back, so that you can say to them, NO. I WILL BE THE LIFE AND LOVE I AM.

In spiritual practices, you must do the thing you do not want to do, for it is precisely the thing that will propel you forward!