Day 19: Let Go
It seems everywhere you turn there’s a new “5-Step Morning Routine for your BEST life ever.”
And everyone wants to know what the biggest brains are routinely doing each morning in a hope that somehow following those same steps to the letter will magically elevate our day too.
Don’t get me wrong.
Routine is great for efficiency.
But, Ritual — Ritual stokes the soul.
Routine is linear and leaves little room for all the beautiful color that exists between black & white, the full spectrum of experience between right and wrong.
Ritual is rhythmic, allowing us to tap into the cycles of the natural world around us.
Though they may look the same from the outside, the difference between the two is vast and a distance bridged only by presence, attention, and the intentions underlying our actions:
Would you rather learn how to more efficiently optimize the tasks on today’s to do list?
Or are you seeking an enrapturing embodiment of the highest vision for your life?
Ritual is routine made sacred.
When I think of my practice as merely a routine, it becomes obligatory, heavy. And I never seem to have “enough time” for it.
I’ve found that elevating my daily practice from routine into ritual is helping me heal my fractured relationship to time.
Through ritual, we allow ourselves to loosen our attachment to commonly-held understandings of time.
That …
It goes by too fast (or too slow, depending on what you’re doing or waiting for — “are we there yet?”).
It’s sped up by deadlines.
It’s weighed down by regrets about time passed.
It’s divided up into schedules and calendars and time tables and action items and spreadsheets.
It’s marked only by milestones or somehow lost to the rote nature of tasks and duties.
There’s never enough.
We’re always rushing and yet still always behind.
Fuck routine if you’re stuck, hit a snag in your morning practice this week, or are beating yourself up over not doing 40 EM “perfectly.” Let it be stunning. Let it be ritual.
see you right back here tomorrow,
Cath
Meditation: YOU CHOOSE. Do the journaling exercise👇 first to see which one you’ll pick.
Reflection: What we love and what we hate are both good teachers — giving us lots of information to work with about ourselves and this moment. I always tell my people:
Move toward what you’re naturally drawn to (if you “like” something, you’re more likely to do it again, right?)
Stay curious about what you’re absolutely averse to (what we’re sure “is not for us” often is exactly what we need.)
Using this framework, choose one meditation to practice today through Saturday —
Was there one you felt more drawn to? Maybe that’s your natural choice.
Was there one that made you REALLY uncomfortable? As long as you feel safe, I’d say there’s still work there for you to do.
Begin to imprint the meditation you choose into your being. Practice what you’re becoming. Become what you’re practicing.
— OR —