Love in Action.

 I'm not going to a spiritual/wilderness course this week. I was vacillating about it for the last week, trying to decide what was the right decision.

I think this is the main or second to main reason why (the main one just being my felt sense of rightness):

I've done a lot of intellectual learning, and taken a lot of classes, even really well taught classes that really integrated experience and practice into them. But all that has to be balanced with practice, action, doing, in life. I think the ratio is maybe 80-20, with 80% being the actual practice and only 20% the learning of new things. I've leaned really heavily on the learning, because I love learning and am good at it. Good at being a student.

But what is really needed for advancement and mastery, is practice. I don't need to go anywhere for that, I just need to do it, and filling up all my time with classes and trying to learn new things, can end up meaning there's no time for that necessary practice.

One of the translations of the Yoga Vasistha that I've read, and many other good sources of spiritual knowledge I've run across, harp again and again on the idea that enlightenment, and, frankly, everything else, comes from your effort alone. Even though the grace of God is also needed, so they say (and makes perfect common-sense to me), that part is out of your control, and so not worth worrying about. Except to put in the effort necessary to earn that grace, as is possible. 

Even though enlightenment can never be achieved through the mind (again, as the books I've read on it and saints I've listened to say, not being enlightened myself), it still takes the activity of the mind, to remove the problematic elements of the mind. I love the saying, "it takes a thorn to remove a thorn." For this idea.

So, in any case, I am trying to simplify down my life, and consciously choose to take action on the things that are most important. That means focusing on my own practice. I've got plenty of information already. It's like I've been reading lots of books on how to work out well, going to courses that show me how to work out well and give me some practice, but ultimately, unless I'm in a course all year long, I need to learn how to work out, regularly, on my own, as part of my life. So, in service of that, I am continually trying to say no to extra things so I can focus on taking action around the few things that really matter to me.

I don't need to go somewhere and take a class to do that, I just need to do it.

I was thinking about titling this "just do it" after the nike thing, but apparently that was inspired by the last words of a death row inmate, so I thought, maybe not. (I wonder if that is actually true, maybe it's fake news, but if so it fooled all the major news outlets). Instead, I'm thinking of another phrase that's more uplifting, "love in action." I didn't come up with it, but I like it a lot. The love part is really important, actually, as it's easy to get too intense, self destructive, other-destructive, and unbalanced, if you don't add that into the mix. So it's a good catchphrase for focusing me on what I need to be working on these days.

I wonder if I'm caught up now?