For more than three decades, I have regularly chosen a challenge for two to five years at a time as a framework for my intention to explore a new way and a different way of being. I have also explored deeply held beliefs. Often this became the starting point to see what was true and where the journey was going from that particular aspect. Twice when I chose a time span of five years, it was because I figured I needed more time to make fundamental changes that involved other people as well.
Where does a clear intention and the creating that goes with it take me? Do my experiences align with those I read from others? Does truth prove itself?
Engaging in a project of this nature is a practice, an exploration that serves me well.
It’s like religion and spirituality. Religion asks me to believe in something others tell me.
Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected. Through and with an intelligence greater than all of us combined and also that our connection to that power and to each other is rooted in love and belonging. Living spirituality gives our lives perspective, meaning and purpose. ~Brene Brown.
And thus spirituality is the practice, not the theory, of experiencing and knowing oneself. Spirituality invites me to look at what is showing itself to me. To engage with it, to discover it as mine.
When I examined what gratitude does in my life, it took me almost 18 months to see fundamental effects of my daily practice.
But the bottom line of all my personal challenges is a common one. I am not Jesus, I am not Nelson Mandela, I am not Buddha, and I don’t want to be anyone else. No star, no idol, no saint is worth more than me. No path is holier in its ups and downs than my own. Even if the depths feel dirty, painful, abysmal. This is my path.