Violin

 Watch someone just learning to play the violin.  Then watch someone who is a master of it.  The newbie is struggling mightily and you can see it and feel for the person.  The master seems not to struggle at all.  The difference is practice.  Both persons want to be violinists.  The desire is there but the practice time is vastly different.  So why should it not be so with a spiritual path.  We get attracted to a path because we see an adept at practice.  No one is attracted to someone painfully struggling.  But prayer life takes practice if we want our lives to seem “effortless.”  The effort will always be there but it will eventually flow and attract others.  No one is attracted to a Recovery Program if everyone in the room acts insanely.  They might have all been insane at one time, but Practice of a spiritual way made a difference.  

Dawn

I think of myself as a “dawn” person.  I am not living in darkness.  I do have a spiritual practice.  But I am not fully in the light.  I can see it coming and my practice is to strive toward it.  But I am not yet fully in the light.  So I have to be on my watch that I don’t trip over my character defects or personal shortcomings, or try to return to the past which is just a form of darkness.  The past, the darkness is over.  Prayer is moving toward the light, or being moved by some Power toward the Light.  

Effects

 Events End.  Effects do not.  When we continue to live in shame and guilt, and resentment, we are still living the past in the present.  We cannot change the past, so why live it in our bodies?  Serenity is in part accepting things I cannot change.  It can take courage to change the things you can.  Why?  Because it might involve telling someone else about the event, relationship, experience.  Isolation is often living in the past because there is no one to whom we can talk about our shame and guilt and resentments.  Even monks have confessors, spiritual guides who know their secrets.  Then there are no secrets and we can begin to let go of the effects of the past.  We can live in the present, having learned self-acceptance and wisdom of letting the past stay past.  

Grace

 San Francisco is a town with the kind of weather in which one can survive sleeping “rough,” that is, outdoors.  It rarely gets real cold or real hot.  We have a lot of homeless, and many of them are on drugs and alcohol.  When I see one of these people on the street as I walk by, I have gratitude, rather than judgment or distain for their actions.  Why gratitude?  There but for the GRACE of God, as the saying goes.  No one takes their first hit of these highly addictive drugs, saying, “Oh, I want to become homeless, jobless and addicted.”  The first intake is for other reasons such as loneliness, alienation, self-pity, anger, resentment, and all the other common feelings that many of us can have as human beings.  I never took that first fentanyl, crack or cocaine.  I am often weak and stupid and delusional.  So it was GRACE.  

After Time

If you are like me and believe in an afterlife, something beyond our physical death, do you ever wonder what language it might speak so as to connect?.  I expect the After Life is more than like riding a New York Subway where no one looks or talks to anyone they don’t know.  So if it is going to be very communal, what language will it speak.  My belief is that the language will be “Prayer.”  So, every time that I pray it is like being in language school, practicing for this new place I hope to live in after I die.  This helps encourage me to practice Prayer and meditation.   

Time Is Money

 When I get something that I believe came from God, I cannot really pay God, like I would pay someone for something I got through or from them.  God does not need any payment.  But time is money.  So I can pay God my attention.  This is what I am doing in prayer and meditation.  I am paying attention to God.  Five minutes a day is better than nothing, but it is quite close to nothing.  My “precious” time can be my downfall.  

The Owner

 Do you fixate on things you used to own?  Or on things that you do own, but might need to let go?  If so, things might own you instead of you owning them.  I live in a small space which saves me from having too much stuff.  I don’t have a garage full of things such that the car is parked outside.  Or maybe a couple cars.  So my circumstances save me from myself.  I cannot buy something until I ask. “Where do I put it?”  Since there is little space, I tend not to buy things that I don’t absolutely need, like toothpaste.  Maybe something that I never use, but is useful, might be good for someone else!  What a concept.