The Ebb and Flow of a Spiritual Practice

May 10, 2018 Confluence

Reading Time: 3 minutes

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Someone once told me that they were inspired by my spiritual practice, and they bemoaned that their own practice came in “fits and starts”.

I was flattered by the admiration, but I must honestly admit that my practice has its own ups and downs, – and I’ve decided that I’m okay with that now. But it hasn’t always been easy for me to understand that it is, indeed, okay.

I used to beat myself up because I couldn’t get in the groove of journaling every single day – it felt like I wasn’t consistent in my journaling practice. And since I love beautiful journals I felt guilty every time I bought another one since I had a whole shelf full of beautiful empty journals. The thing I wasn’t giving myself credit for was that I also have a stack of journals that were indeed full of written pages. Then I realized that my practice is very consistent, it just doesn’t happen daily. My practice has a flow, a pattern, and it works for me. I pick up journaling and morning pages when I need them, sometimes that is every day for weeks or months at a time, sometimes it’s just once a week, sometimes I go for long stretches of not journaling at all.

This is my practice. It’s what works for me.

My yoga practice flows the same way. My meditation practice, although somewhat more regular from day to day, has its own ebb and flow. I’ve read tarot cards for almost two decades now, and my card reading practice has its own rhythm as well.

Yes, I do have parts of my practice that are consistent in a daily way, but for my spiritual practices as a whole, there is an ebb and flow. Sometimes my spiritual practice for the day is reading, sometimes writing, sometimes both.

Sometimes I meditate, or do yoga, or both.

Sometimes a long walk in nature is the most powerful spiritual practice I can commit to that day.

And I think that’s just fine. Nature has an ebb and flow. Life has ups and downs. We have seasons.

The German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said that “matter is spirit fallen into a state of self-otherness”. His idea has often been interpreted in the thought that “we are not humans having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” If this is true, then we can’t not have a spiritual practice. We are spiritual beings. Our life is our practice.

All around us we can observe that nature functions in the framework of cycles. Birth and death, growth and dormancy, receiving and releasing – we see it in the bare branches and new sprouts. We witness the moon’s monthly waxing full and then waning – over and over. And each part of the cycle is important and essential.

Any athlete will tell you that the rest is just as important as the work. We need stillness, we need activity. Ebb and flow.

Seeds need time to germinate. Seeds spend a lot of time underground in the dark, and from above it looks like nothing is happening. But in reality, everything is happening.

We don’t always recognize that our “waning phases” are as important as our “waxing phases” but that’s the cycle, the journey, the ebb & flow. It’s a process.

Trust the process.

More by Cindie Chavez:

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE NAKED TRUTH

FIVE WAYS TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE BY TWEAKING A FEW LITTLE WORDS

THE POWER OF SELF-FORGIVENESS + A RITUAL TO HELP YOU DO IT

Cindie Chavez is known as “The Love & Magic Coach”. She is the creator of MOONLIGHT™ – A Course in Manifesting Love and she has some great free stuff for you at her website: www.cindiechavez.com