December 30--Spiritual Practice--It Works If You Work It

This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something. 
  --Elizabeth Gilbert

    At the end of each year, I do a "year in review" post to remind myself that despite challenges, my life is generally quite good. That post is coming tomorrow. 

    Today I devote some thoughts to my most important daily activity--my spiritual practice and its hopeful result, spiritual growth. I offer this quote from Ernest Holmes: 

Failure does not mean the loss of something. Failure occurs only if the loss of that thing takes our enthusiasm, our courage, our zest for life, our faith, our conviction and our happiness from us. That is failure indeed.

    The downhill slide for me started in August 2022, when a couple of big losses occurred for me in fairly short order. This led to the failure Holmes described. I don't know for sure if it was depression or grief or both, but it stole all the good things in life that Holmes mentions. I went through the motions of daily life, but I think of 2023 mentally/emotionally/spiritually as a slog-through-it-fog. 

    Toward the end of 2023, I was coming to consciously realize that the trajectory I was on was not a good one and change was required. There was definitely my broken heart that needed relief. I did an intention-setting workshop on January 1, 2024, and selected two things to focus on: 1) staying healthy and active, and 2) encouraging and allowing myself to be a happy human. I was extremely consistent with my daily spiritual practice which supported the intentions. I still had the occasional meltdown and bad-attitude day. And there was the other major setback of my brother passing in April 2024, but at least for him, it was a huge blessing. Knowing that has given me some relief from the grief. 

    I am grateful for three other things that have helped "pull me back from the edge." One is decades of practicing the 12-Step program. Another is the monthly sessions with my spiritual coach/mentor. Lastly, much healing resulted from heavy-duty journaling through the book "The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist" by Debbie Mirza. (See Oct 24 post for more on that.) 

    Overall, I feel I did a good job on the intentions for 2024, and I am sticking with those for 2025. I can't stress enough the value of a daily spiritual practice. One of the things that started my downhill slide in 2022 is an ongoing issue completely out of my control, so I have to stay vigilant to keep my thoughts in a positive direction. My personal prayers have been pretty much reduced to "help!" and "thank you!" It seems to me that Spirit knows what to do from there. 

    Ready for 2025,

        Leta