Four Weeks of Spiritual Practice

This morning marks four full weeks of daily spiritual work: prayer, reading, journaling, and meditation. I have done each of these things every morning since the year began. I’ve done them even when it felt as if I did not have the time. I’ve done them even when I had to look at my watch and say, “I have fifteen minutes and that is what I have to devote this morning.” So some mornings have been better than others. But I haven’t missed a morning.

So in other words, this has been a practice. Something I have done regularly and without fail.

Why?

I ended 2014 at a very low point emotionally and spiritually. I felt exhausted and pressured. Things that had brought me joy before seemed tepid at best. I had fleeting periods of good feeling, but they were briefer and briefer. I felt increasingly empty, even in the midst of loving family, rewarding work, and evident physical health. I was working out. I was doing yoga. I was eating right. Indeed, some Facebook friends would say I over-emphasized my “healthy lifestyle,” flooding the Internet with pictures of happy-me at yoga and the gym, and plates full of good Paleo grub.

But: empty.

At the new year, people often make resolutions or set intentions. I resolved to try to take some kind of action. I could not go on so empty. I decided to shed all of the “activities” I had engaged in, all the body-worship and inward-focus. My healthy eating, my working out, even my yoga . . . it was all focused on me. It was a circle leading nowhere.

So I dropped it all and got back to basics. Simple, spiritual practice. Period. Nothing fancy. Each morning:

1. Read spiritual literature
2. Pray to the God of my understanding
3. Write a “letter to God,” which counts as my journal
4. Meditate

I can’t say I am a person with deep faith, so the prayer was nothing fancy. I asked each day for knowledge of God’s will for me, and the power and willingness to carry it out. In other words, my prayer was just that I would know the next right thing to do, and have the willingness to do it. I did not picture a being overseeing the world, it was not a Christian or any other kind of religious god I was praying to. Just a force for good that I think of as x. An unknown quantity. I’m not even sure I believe, nor do I think I have to.

The journaling was simple too. You often see people in movies writing a “dear diary” kind of entry. I thought it would be useful to feel as if I was telling someone what was on my mind that morning. A long time ago someone mentioned to me that when they were feeling bad they wrote a letter to God and that stuck with me. So I tried it again.

And as for meditation, this, too, was nothing fancy. A few years ago I obtained the book Meditation for Beginners by Jack Kornfield. It’s got a CD with a few short meditation exercises. (Here’s audio of the first one, which just focuses on being aware of breath.) They are each about ten minutes. I would just listen to one every morning. If I had little time, I would just set my timer for five minutes, and count my breaths, trying to be aware of how I felt for each one. Again . . . nothing fancy.

The purpose of all this was twofold. I wanted relief from the hamster wheel rolling in my head. And I wanted to focus outside of myself. By asking for the power and willingness to just be helpful in the world, I thought I might fret less about my own little dramas.

After a few days, perhaps just short of a week, I began slowly to feel better. My world did not change, the skies did not part, there was no “awakening.” I just felt better.I began slowly to feel more able to handle things that came my way. I did not fear the day so much. Troubles began to shrink. I began to have some perspective.

Another week passed.  I began to feel I had the mental (and temporal) bandwidth to start yoga again, and some exercise. But I promised myself if those things crowded out my spiritual practice that I would drop them again immediately. So what if I got fatter and weaker? I had to be right on the inside. And the practice continued.

And things kept improving.

This has been the steady result. Not in a linear progression — it has had its ups and downs, its strong days and weaker days.

I plan to continue this practice moving forward. Not out of any virtue. I don’t think “good people pray and meditate, bad people don’t.” But it seems to be working for me and I don’t want to feel like I did four weeks ago. And it gets easier each day I practice. I am less distracted as I write, my mind wanders less when I meditate.

But overall I can say I feel much more whole than I did on January 1. I feel more useful to those around me. And that’s an OK start.