90 Days of ILP

Venti-sized coffee. Beers at 1 in the morning. 4 hours of sleep. Obsessive, self-injuring behavior all around. Sound like the lifestyle of somebody before taking on an Integral Life Practice? Think again.

Everything was fine two weeks ago. I was getting up at 8am every day, fully rested, and jumping into my morning meditation and exercise before working on my art. I was meeting my Men's Group goals, keeping the TV turned off, and minding my shadows. As my 90-day assessment indicated, things were going swimmingly. There was no turning back, but life has a way of shoving you in the ribcage and saying "not so fast!" And that's what's going on now.

It's not that I don't want to self-improve. Far from it. In fact, I'm more obsessed with it than ever. But it extends beyond just deepening my spirituality, toning my body, and fostering an ability to practice the thought experiment of integral perspective-taking. Career-wise, I'm still a mess. If you've seen my other blog, you know that my creative output is all over the map, serving all sorts of intentions, none of them, it appears, to draw much of an audience. I have a day job, but I have a lot of other things I want to do besides.

And so I obsess over this new project: me. Who am I? What do I do best? What is my future? What do I desire more than anything that will suck me like a giant magnet into the future? How can I think and grow "rich" with life, purpose, meaning, money, and influence?

Yes, these are egoic concerns. For many of our Boomer peers, they are issues largely settled. But for we X/Y/Millenial/Generation IMers, finding our way in the world is still of outmost concern. You need a Self to transcend, after all, and sometimes the discovery of that "Self" takes a lot more precedence over being a good boy or girl and doing your daily practice chores. I am reminded of something Ken once said to Stu, when the latter had confessed having trouble being both an amazing musician and a diligent practitioner. To badly paraphrase: "Sometimes you have to allow yourself to get out of balance in order to follow the call of the Muse. But in the off-time, you be damn well sure you get your practice in, so you'll have the strength to outlast the Muse's whims when She comes a-calling."

And so Tuff Ghost, and everyone else feeling bad when practice apathy bites them in the butt, take solace: it happens to all of us, because practice is more than just four core modules.