This is key. To everything.
I’ve been talking to so many people about this in so many different settings.
We start a practice for a good reason, and at first, it seems to be “helping” In whatever way we were looking for help.
Then over time, this feeling of being helped diminishes. We become disillusioned with the practice. We blame the practice. We stop.
Here’s the thing: the practice isn’t entirely the problem; it’s our own misunderstanding of the big picture process that is the problem, and it’s why people jump from one thing to the next, always searching, never diving deep.
Now I said… the practice isn’t “entirely” the problem, because there is a problem when we get too married to a FORM of practice.
This next thing I’m going to say is important:
Form can be helpful... until it's holding us TO IT instead of holding us to the growth we went to it for.
Our devotion, to be effective and to help us evolve, needs to be to essence, not to form.
Look at WHY you are doing WHAT you are doing.
WHY are you doing yoga, for example? Because that WHY is your DEVOTION, not the form of yoga you’ve chosen.
One simple example from my own life:
Sometimes I study Buddhism. Deeply. Then I move to Tantra yoga. Then I even find my way back to the teachings of Christ.
For me, it’s not the form of the spiritual path but the path itself that I am walking and it is created as I walk it.
My devotion is to some sort of understanding of this life we’re all living. The form of that evolves over time as I grow and as my needs change via my experiences.
When it comes to movement practices, this is how the Peony Method was born.
The form of yoga was holding me to a certain shape — on the mat and in my life.
For a time in my life, that restricted shape helped me to feel safe.
But safety is no longer my number one concern because I AM safe.
Now freedom is my concern. Liberation. Thus the Peony Method is alway evolving. From minute to minute, I am breathing and waiting with patience and then allowing movement to arise that is honest to my present moment.
Find something like that, right there. Something that challenges your edges and simultaneously helps you to keep your center.