When something is important to us, we put it first.
Typically, that means that we put ourselves first.
“What I want.”
“What’s convenient for me.”
When you’re on an active spiritual path, that tends not to take you very far.
In fact, a spiritual path will – after a requisite honeymoon period of bliss and beauty – start to make demands on you.
Maybe you had planned your week with your meditation group on Thursdays, and then all of a sudden, your wicked meditation teacher (that’s me) switches them to Tuesdays.
Maybe you asked out a cute girl for a date on Saturday, and then you hear that a special teacher will be in town that night.
How do you react? Do you grumble and b!tch about the changes? Or do you roll with it and rearrange your life, because you know that putting your spiritual practice first will take you farther than any other mundane activities of the human world possible can?
Enlightenment is not convenient in another way: You can’t schedule it in advance. It’s not like you can plan out a project that says, “I’m going to meditate X hours a day for the next Y months and then by the end of the summer, I’ll be Enlightened.”
No. It doesn’t work that way. Eternity is not on your schedule.
And do you want to know the delicious thing about it? Eternity will SURPRISE YOU with her own agenda.
You may be sitting on your meditation mat, minding your own business, going about your standard morning routine of mostly thinking trying to quiet your mind… when THWACK!
Like you’re hit upside the head with a 2″x4″, all of a sudden you’re traversing worlds of beauty and light within your mind. An ecstasy. A mild satori, even. Something utterly amazing.
A meditation so incredible, in fact, that it turns you to Jell-o and you’re hardly functional.
Not like you’d be complaining. 🙂
Enlightenment happens on its own pace, and in its own time… but I promise you one thing. It won’t be happening much at all if you don’t get your priorities straight.