It All Begins with a Single Step!

Dear Soul, I started a journey of devotion and self-exploration by committing to a Kundalini Kriya, with the intention of lasting 40 days! I have surprised myself having just completed day 250. For the first 40 days I wrote daily and shared my observations. After reaching my first goal I revised my practice. I stopped the daily updates but continued my chanting. I still kept up my personal writing recording my insights or lack of. Each day I have kept a journal of this journey. Today I have reached day 250 and I wanted to share my achievement.

Along the way and through my devotional practice I have revised my goal several times and pleasantly surprised myself with my tenacity in reaching each one. I have met the goals of 40, 90 and 120 days. I have decided I will set the ultimate target of being able to make it to day 1000! This is daunting! I am just an ordinary person and I am fighting my doubt in my ability to do this, but I know nothing ventured nothing gained. I have nothing to lose. I want to say I have nothing to lose in trying, but trying is not doing and I have failed before I start if I embrace the connotations of the word “trying.”

I am not sure why there is such a leap in days of my devotional practice when first goals are to make day 40, the second is day 90, and the third is 120; it seems a huge leap to make the next goal 1000! Who am I to argue with this wisdom. I am learning to take one day at a time even when it feels like a ground hog day. The practice of just copying and pasting my days. Other days it leaves me to wonder and marvel.

I have had the self-realization that my ability or inability of making this goal, or any goal, sits squarely on my shoulders. I cannot blame others if I do not accomplish what I have set out to do. Also no one else can say that my success is because of them. My devotional practice has been helping me to reclaim my personal power. My practice has helped to empower me, helping me to claim my mishaps, failures as much as my successes. Ownership of myself, my behaviors and all I do has been slowly rising each day I do my devotional practice. I guess this empowerment is helping me to share my goal I have barely dared to dream life into. The fact I share it surprises me. I have feared failure and ridicule for such a lofty and demanding goal. I have learnt in the past days that either way I am happy and I will take it one day at a time. In the last 250 days I have found that my success lies completely in my own hands.

I have come close a couple of times to breaking my streak and setting myself back to day one. To have my days count it has to be consecutive days. I have come close to forgetting to chant but have been fortunate enough to remember in the nick of time. I have had days when I just do not want to chant at all, not finish what I have started. Each time I have chanted. I have chanted on these days knowing if I do not the count will go back to day one! I do not wish for the days of ambivalence to derail me and cause regret, so I chant on the days helping me to complete my goal. Each of these days I consciously weighed up my options and think that the next day I may very well be disappointed in myself for dropping the proverbial ball or in this case dropping my devotion. I am learning I am capable. I can do this and if I do not it will all be on me and will be a conscious choice I make. I am learning that this chant is showing me I can turn up for myself!

Each day I learn more about who I am. I have had days when I think about my values and belief systems. I have days when I have no insights just the satisfaction that I have chanted. I have days where I have no reward just a task completed on my list. I have days where I wonder why I bothered. Each day is different. Each day I am grateful or not. Each day I accept myself a little more.

Getting to day 250 has been easy and hard. I find this is an echo of the chant itself. The devotional practice is quick and slow depending upon the day. I can feel like I just started and yet I am done and other days it feels like forever before it ends.

The more I travel this road the more I accept myself, the more I find myself and what I stand for. It has not all been sweetness and light. I see I have a shadow too, one that can be bitter, vindictive, holds a grudge and generally not nice to hang out with! To become completely comfortable with myself I need acceptance for this side of me! Do I need to act on her and the answer is no but she has a place in my life. I have found it is okay to have down days and days that just seem too much. It is okay to have days of rage or day of tears. These days are just as important as the days I am filled with light and feeling euphoric. Not all days are of high emotion of joy or darkness; I have just as many blah days when I am neither the shadow nor the light but live in the greyness of the in-between. This is life.

Yesterday I felt fierce and I could conquer all. Today, a day I thought would have much meaning as it marks the quarter way done, was just a day, neither uplifting nor filled with darkness. A day that is just a tick and done. A day I do not break my streak.

Yesterday I noted the truth in the Chinese proverb “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” It was then that I noted during the chant and my journalling afterwards that I am a person who continually takes one step on a path and then finds a new one! I am not a step forward and two backwards! No this is not me! I am the person that chases the rainbow wanting to explore the next new shiny object. This devotion is proving to myself that I can do and be more than this. I can commit. I can show devotion. The true question I have found I need to ask is “Do I want to?” It is this lack of commitment and true devotion to something that finds me flounder in life. I have found that I need to take step two, three and more if I wish to make it to what it is I seek or in this case make it to day 1000.

At this point in time, it is just a day done and dusted and before I know it with the commitment, I have been making it will be day 1000. What I do not know is what I will learn along the way! What I am open to is being surprised and what I need is acceptance for what is uncovered! I am learning I surprise myself and this makes me content.

Maybe I will share more of this journey and maybe I won’t but hopefully it may have you ask yourself “What can I show devotion to?” and maybe like me you will get to learn a lot about who you are and who you are not. Learning who I am not is just as important as finding who I am. Learning to let go and accept what is has helped me. This is a practice that is becoming more about accepting who I am in the moment; in the now. This practice is showing me I am not decided by the scars of my past nor my future worries. I am who I am in the moment that counts.

In love and light

Until the next time

Rebecca