The Cost of Adeptship

        One important thing that you must realize on the spiritual path is that adeptship takes effort, concentration, constancy and sacrifice.   I have spent far too great a portion of my life looking for the ‘magic pill’ that would bring me spiritual enlightenment – or at least some portion of it – without doing the work.  I don’t know if that is possible for someone else but by my experience if you want to get to the top of the mountain you have to do the climbing.   Most of the labor is internal but it is no less labor intensive for all that.  In fact, it is the most difficult work you can do.  It takes a great deal of self-honesty, humility, concentration, patience, constancy and above all, love.  To get where you want to go you must change your entire paradigm.  You will have to be willing to adjust all of your ideas about what is real, about who you are, about how things work and about what is worthwhile to spend your time on.  You might not end up changing all your ideas but you have to be willing to let go of any and all that impeed your progress to the presence of God in your life.  You will even have to let go of your ideas about where you are headed and what you will see when you get there.  Do not be caught by what someone else has told you about God or heaven or Nirvana or whatever.   That is their experience.   It may be very real for them and useful for you as a map but it isn’t what God has in store for you, maps can only give you locations not the actual experience and if you hold onto their reality you stifle your own.  The map isn't the environment.  That isn’t to say you can’t learn from others or I wouldn’t be doing this blog.  But you must subject everything to the judgement of the God within you.

        Don’t be discouraged if you don’t feel that you have all those qualities I mentioned above.  That is part of the trip, becoming.   As I have heard it said: you fake it ‘til you make it.  And remember, this is a process, a path.  You are who you are at the moment and it is good enough for the moment.  Just do it.  Just start walking the path.  That is all it really takes.