Weeks 5 & 6: The Power of the Smaller Route

The word "routine" is really a powerful one. It is dervived from Latin, and from there it's found its way to French, where it means literally "a smaller road". In essence it means a path or a clearing in a forest.

By working with different parts in ourselves we little by little cut down our inner wilderness and make way for something else to appear. With our daily routines we create something alive inside us, a place of rest where we can take refuge when the going gets tough. I guess the tough get going like that.

Routines must be many-sided, I reckon. Just making a singe path in the woods is like putting all the eggs in one basket. Man is a many-storied machine, and so should be our practices as well. The big idea behind my Integral Life Practice is just that: by creating routines in body, mind, spirit and shadow, I actually make every respective path a bit stronger. Or that's my working belief, anyway.

As to my actual practice, I've now successfully gotten up at 6 am every morning for almost four weeks now. This week I started excercising daily in addition to that. Both of those practices have a behind them an actual value, that I wish to acquire into my being. Namely, self-reliance and will. Getting up early increases my feeling of being able to rely on my self, my promises, my being. And doing what I dislike almost the first thing in the morning is an attempt to create a small path to the refuge of Will, where I can have a certain sense of trust in "mind over mattress", as Robin Sharma put it.

Today I will give a lecture of sorts on the basics of AQAL philosophy of Ken Wilber. That should be nice. And it's just about two weeks before our baby should arrive! Kinda exciting, to say the least... :)