Yesterday I wrote about how devotion is a prerequisite of spiritual growth. How does that align with what I often write about, which is how effortless this Positively Focused practice is?
Feels like a contradiction, doesn’t it? Well, it’s certainly a paradox, one of many that comprises this You Create Your Own Reality (YCYOR) business.
The Positively Focused practice IS effortless. Once we develop momentum behind new ways of being, new habits form and effortlessness does ensue. Before then, however, some “work” is needed. At least it feels that way.
But why? If the practice is effortless, why is work needed at all?
The “work” I’m referring to involves contending with momentum already existing within us. Momentum born of unconsciously-formed beliefs. Beliefs creating our reality, a reality we don’t like and thus feel bad about. The “work” involves creating a new reality that replaces the one we don’t like.
Daily devotion feels great
“Contending with” means creating new beliefs, starting with new thoughts or stories, that, in time, will develop an associated momentum. Gradually, our life experience reflects that new momentum proving the new reality’s emergence. I write “gradually” as a kind of paradox too, because evidence shows up immediately. We just need to learn where to look to see the evidence.
These initial steps feel like “work” (and may feel “hard”) because our existing reality has momentum. We create new momentum in the midst of that old momentum. And the experience of that juxtaposition feels “hard” or like “work”.
This Positively Focused practice is all about telling better-feeling stories. “That juxtaposition feels “hard” or like “work”” is a story. A better story describing that same experience is: “it feels better and better to focus on the reality that’s emerging, rather than the reality that is.”
Both stories refer to the exact same experience. One conjures a feeling of “hard work”. The other? A feeling of ease, pleasure, effortlessness.
So it’s all in the story. It’s all in the devotion. A daily devotion. Spiritual growth is effortless, the moment we revise our stories about how that daily devotion feels is when “effortless” begins.