Practice

Practice

Practice is doing something over and over until we become proficient at it. It could be music, martial arts, pottery, tight rope walking or meditation. It’s important to find our practice edge, the aspect of our practice where the challenge is just great enough to stretch our capacity but not too difficult where we fall into chaos and disorder.

Do you know your practice edge? Do you know exactly what you are practicing?

• Is it staying fully engaged during your practice time?
• Is it making a commitment every day and keeping it when you want to or need to do something else?
• Is it staying on the object of concentration?
• Is it easing up, taking your hands off the steering wheel to let it happen on its own once you have good concentration ?
• Is it not judging your practice, but rather developing your meta cognitive intelligence to know where an adjustment is needed?
• Perhaps you can inquire into this on your own or with your practice partner.

Spiritual practice is a subtle art. It touches the mysterious intersection of our personal effort in relation to the Divine unfoldment. We need to apply ourselves fully, learn, and become more skillful. Paradoxically the separated ego must learn to relax as we discover that we are inseparable from the loving current of the Great Unfoldment.

Below Rumi describes the bind of over-pushing for results.

…All your impatience

Comes from the push

For gain of patience

Let go of the effort

And peace will arrive……

– Rumi, Fountain of Fire

Translation by Nader Khalili

New Rain Online: General Tip – Our Spiritual Practice – June 2022