I think that when we think about our spiritual path, we always think of regular practice as the gold standard. But more than just an ideal to strive for, we can beat ourselves up if we don't manage to keep our practice regular. And yet, we live in a world that does not allow for our religion, and honestly life in general can be problematic for a regular practice.
What do we even mean about a regular practice? For some people it means honoring the Sabbats (or whatever big, yearly celebrations you honor in your path), for others it might be working through the moon cycle, and for some it means daily practice. But regardless of how frequent your observances are, when we miss one (for any reason), we can feel completely thrown off.
And I want to examine that thought a bit more. Sometimes we end up not having time to make our spiritual observances because we have obligations (like job, family or something else outside of ourselves). These kind of obligations can feel oppressive, often because we have zero choice about them. Our job might have a set schedule, and we can't just take a day off because it's the full moon (and we don't have the privilege of our worship days being considered 'normal' days off). Or we may simply have too much that we have to do in our 'time off' and by the time we get that all done, we don't have energy to devote to our spiritual practice.
It's sad that we live in a day and age where we still have to make the choice between our mental health and our physical well-being (even though we KNOW that bad mental health impacts our physical health as well...but we also don't want to be starving and homeless). It's frustrating to know that we don't get the same opportunities other people do, when it comes to religion and the observation of our faith. But we also have to recognize the facts, and the facts are that sometimes we don't have the same options as other people, and we have to make do with the best we can manage.
We also have to deal with personal judgements on our spirituality. A lot of people will accept "Sorry, I have church," as a perfectly valid reason to not do something else, but if we say "Sorry, I have ritual," we are being anti-social or rude. And so we may end up having to choose between our faith and our friends/family. Sometimes we can get away with making white lies, with giving some other reason why we are unavailable....but that can make us feel shame about something that is important to us, something that we shouldn't have to hide or make excuses for. Or we may have to make the decision to cut people out of our life because they can't accept that this is something that is deeply important to us, and we shouldn't have to feel bad about making time for it!
As frustrating as external reasons are for interrupting your practice, personal ones can be more damaging to our psyche. We are all human, and sometimes that means we forget things. As someone who really struggles with both executive dysfunction and time blindness, keeping up with things is a huge struggle for me. And the mental fatigue and stress that come along with that struggle are not great for either self-worth or actually doing things.
One of the biggest things I have done to help me have a more regular practice....is to be kind with myself when it's not. I have done a LOT of work coming to terms with the fact that I can't do all of the things that I want to do, and that on a bad day, I may not be able to do anything that I wanted to. And that no matter how many systems I put in place to help me, I'm probably not going to 'always' do things. And learning how to be okay with that took work.
I feel like another huge thing is to embrace the concept of 'just for today'. Yes, I need to be aware of my own history, of both my strengths and weaknesses...but I also need to NOT beat myself up over my mistakes. It doesn't matter how many times I've missed doing a thing....I can always do it today. And if I didn't do it today, I can always do it tomorrow. Sometimes this means me taking a moment to just let go of that expectation and judgement of myself.
I have always loved thinking about my path as a spiral....it's cyclical in that I work with a lot of cycles, but each time I walk that path, I am raising to a new level. I'm building on each and every step I've taken before...and it doesn't matter if sometimes I miss steps or if there are long breaks. Because I will never be walking over the same ground again, each step will be a new one and each one will carry with it all of my previous steps!
And there is something about that image that I find so comforting. Even when I have to remind myself of things I've learned before, I'm not really starting over. Even when I feel like I have lost everything, even when nothing feels familiar as I relearn, I am still a different person than I was the last time I worked on this particular thing, so I will be able to figure out new aspects of it. And as someone who has to repeat stuff a lot, that is pretty comforting to me.
So I encourage you all to keep pecking away at what you want to do. Set big goals! If you want a daily practice, work towards it! But whenever you falter (and you will, best you accept that right away), send yourself some love, learn what you can from the experience...and take the next step (when you are able to).
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