Practice, practice, practice
03/22/2010

It was a troublesome week.  My visiting family members left and my life should have returned to normal--meaning I should have been able to return to my 27 Days of Transformative Change formal practice commitments.  And in some ways I did: meditate daily?  Check.  (Three times/day? No check.)  Refrain from alcohol consumption? Check.  Limit meat consumption?  Check.  Give three hours/week or more to community organizing?  Check.  Live from a place of mindful awareness of teh matrix of conscious intelligence in which I am embedded?  No flippin;' way...and I was quite cranky about it.  What's the point of practice if I only end up feeling farther away from my spiritual goal?  What good is the form of practice, if the content--the SPIRIT, for cryin' out loud--evaporates?

We had our weekly check-in call yesterday.  It was just one other practitioner and Muki, our practice leader.  I complained about my week.  Kept the form, lost the content.  Was aware of the irony and had a bad attitude nonetheless.  For the whole damn week.

Then it was my co-practitioner's turn.  Her week had been similar: weeks of changing her diet, meditating, and exercising daily had failed to correct her high blood pressure.  Plus, on Friday a fight broke out at the group home for troubled youth where she works.  Despite staff's best efforts to de-escalate the conflict, the kids were not de-escalating.  They were escalating.  There was a long moment when she wondered whether they all might survive the day.  What was the point of practice?

I suddenly felt the shame of a privileged life.  I was cranky because I wasn't getting to enjoy the "feeling" of blissed-out spiritual practice.  I wasn't able to control my life to my satisfaction.  I wasn't able to live up to my expectations in all respects.  But was I healthy?  Check.  Safe?  Check. Family members healthy and safe?  Check.  Have a job?  Check.  A roof, three ample meals, an adequate wardrobe?  Check.  Time for work that is meaningful to me?  Check.  

So what, please remind me, was I flippin' p-o'd about?  Had I not committed to "release all ideas about who is doing practice, who practice is done for, and practice that is done."  Just practice.

Thank you, fellow practitioner.  Thank you, Muki, Rev. Angel, and the Center for Transformative Change for holding the container for our practice.  Thank you, Magnificent Universe, for the opportunity to be on the playing field during these quantum evolutionary times--when, for starters, after 100 years, healthcare reform (weak, watered-down, and deeply flawed) finally passed, just last night, the first day of spring 2010!  For all these blessings and many others I am so humbly grateful.  

And so it is.