You ARE worth the effort

I have an orientation toward commitment and discipline. It does not come easy, but I have demonstrated to myself throughout my life that commitment and discipline are possible in the face of adversity, external influences, and temptation. So when I decided to change my life a decade ago, I knew the direction I wanted to go in would require great commitment and discipline. But nothing could have prepared me for the level of commitment and discipline I would need. I needed to experience it first-hand in order to understand commitment and discipline on a deeper level.

Almost immediately upon leaving corporate Canada, I began a meditation practice. Soon after that prayer and yoga joined forces with my meditation to form the foundation of my daily practice. New teachings and study were added to that base and soon life itself became my daily practice. Perhaps this last point deserves its article one month. But back to the focus on commitment and discipline…

Along the way there were never any shortage of distractions to vie for my attention. It would range from the seemingly practical necessities of life (e.g., earning money, paying the rent, etc.), to enticing calls to entertain myself, to egoic macerations aimed at tempting me with pleasure and fulfilling desires, to the cornucopia of distractions in the outside world, not to mention all the versions and forms of the preceding brought on by every single person around me.

As life has unfolded for me, I have been blessed to share life with many other students and teachers.  Their journeys through their spiritual practice has been a splendid canvas of masterpiece after masterpiece in the process of being painted. Some begin the journey of spiritual practice but quickly see it dissipate. Fewer stay with it for a short period of time (e.g., a year) before letting it go. Fewer still stay with it for an extended period of time (e.g., a few years) before allowing it to drop away. And even fewer allow the practice to become the foundation of their waking breath and the life force that sustains them for the rest of their days.

One of the more interesting things I have observed across the spectrum of varied efforts, is that the sooner the person allows their spiritual practice to drop away, the sooner they are to return to it in. For example, if a person begins a practice and after a month allows it to fall away, that person will typically want to come back to a practice (most likely a different one) within a month of stopping; versus the person who has been practicing for a few months or a year taking about that amount of time to come back to a practice.

Without exception, when students and teachers speak to me about the reason they have an on-and-off-again approach to their spiritual practice is that their commitment and discipline is weak. They talk about and often ask how they can improve their commitment and discipline, not just to their spiritual practice but any aspect of their lives that requires commitment and discipline.

There is a non-dualistic teaching that speaks directly to this conundrum. The teaching informs us that the issue is not one of commitment or discipline. The issue is that we do not believe we are worth the effort. And under that realization is the ultimate awareness that the reason we do not believe we are worth the effort is because we do not love ourselves.

So I have a message for you…you ARE worth the effort! I love you!! And so do you!!! You just don’t realize it yet.