Step 10 journal: love, discipline and surrender

[ZenDancer]

Steps 10 & 11: a Zen Christian’s journey in love, paradox and union..

 

Hello peeps!

There are few things more clichéed  than someone making great vows to improve their habits in the new year…. so here I go with a new journal…

I’ve been sober in recovery for some years now, and I’m guessing some folks here will already know that the 12 Steps are essentially a spiritual program. I’m gonna use this space to keep track of my actions and progress on Stepds 10 and 11:

10 Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we

understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

Over the years I’ve made forays into many different spiritual paths, but these last few years I seem to have found the path that works for me in a combination of Soto Zen and Christian meditation… I’m much taken with the work and ideas of teachers like Thomas Merton and Richard Rohr..

So over the course of 2020 I’m aiming to update here each day on my practice and experience, both in meditation and ‘off the cushion’. The measure of a spiritual life is not in what happens ‘on the cushion’ but what happens away from it. After all, if I’m not growing in love and connectedness, both with my fellows and the world, what’s the point of my practice?

If there’s one thing I’m pretty certain on about spiritual growth, it’s that paradox is a fundamental aspect of life, of reality and of the spiritual journey. I really see this in the contradiction between deliberate effort and self-dicipline, on one hand, and surrender, on the other. Real transformation isn’t something I can bring about in myself by force of will and rigorous self-dicipline, but by the same token effort and ‘doing the work’ is necessary. Similarly, surrender and self-emptying aren’t things I can ‘achieve’ so much as they are things that happen to me, or envelop me, gradually if I I’m in the right state of openness, readiness and consciousness…

... bla blah blah,.. me me me …. anyhoo… thanks for reading… I’m looking forward to sharing my journey with you, and sharing in yours, in the months ahead…  I expect I have a lot to learn from you all, and I hope I can contribute a little bit as you all find you way along your respective journeys too..

Love,

Lucas

 

[Zigzag Idiot]

@ZenDancer  I appreciate your perspective. Glad that you're with us. ? ?