All Around Growth — reflections on faith, freedom, and finding purpose through Orthodox Christian living, formation, and the long work of becoming. Earlier episodes available to supporters.
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Today we talk about spirituality and how it is an integral component of All Around Growth. We discuss some strategies and tactics to enaging in spiritual practice for the first time, also.
We read from 365 Tao, begininning the show with a brief, poetic aphorism providing the theme, followed by a clear, insightful meditation on the day's Taoist principle. This is followed by commentary by Rob on this October 18, 2021 - the 291st day of the calendar year.
Hello everybody and welcome back to the show. Today we are going to talk about when meditation is a daily meditation. That comes from the book 365 Tao. And it is a book of daily meditations. The book that will provide fodder for today's conversation. And every day begins with a brief poetic aphorism just like that, which provides the theme. And that is followed by a clear, insightful meditation on each day's Taoist principle. And like I said, today's theme is progression. And before I dive into that, this is episode number 208 of the All Around Growth Podcast, a show that provides insight and tools to build the life and homestead of your dreams. My name is Rob Kaiser, and I am your host. So let's get into it, shall we? As I drive down our long driveway, I will simply read from the book and utilize this as my notes or my talking points for today. For those who follow Tao, there is no such thing as just one meditation that you practice for the rest of your life. All of Tao changes and flows. So too should meditation. It is not a static discipline, but rather a progressive means of spiritual living. Beginners have their meditation, advancing students have theirs. Simple people have simple meditations. Complicated people must have meditations that engage them fully. No matter what kind of person you are, there are times when you will exhaust all the potential of a certain contemplative method. After all, a method is only an arbitrary structure, whereas the subconscious that you are trying to master is infinite, changeable, elusive. Therefore, when a method is exhausted, you have to change to another one. Sometimes it is enough to switch back and forth between methods. At other times, you will need to go to a higher stage of meditation. As long as you feel restless, it is a sign that you have not yet become fully mature on the spiritual path. The ultimate levels of meditation deal with a complete stillness of the mind. In this state, one feels nothing, thinks of nothing, worries about nothing. When meditation becomes stale, there is a preoccupation that will prevent you from attaining this stillness. This is why you change until the day when restlessness naturally recedes, and stillness is all that remains. That the title of today's show is progression here on the eighteenth day of October, or the 291st day of the calendar year. And that the theme of the day included some dialogue about meditation. Why? Well, my day yesterday was spent up in the big city, up in Cleveland. And what's nice is I don't have to drive that far to have a big city experience. Within 45 minutes I can be in the Cleveland metro area or the Akron Canton area, and that's quite nice. But here on our little homestead, we are quite removed from all of it. And with a 2,000-foot-long driveway, we're quite removed from the road upon which we live. But my day yesterday was filled with activities up in the big city around the activation tour. Now, I had a great day yesterday, and I'm interested in sharing some of that with you, but I don't know to what extent I want to do that right here this morning on today's episode. Because I'd like to have a little bit of detail and review the notes that I took yesterday in order to provide you with information. So I'd like to try and squeeze in a dedicated episode sometime this week after I've had time to assemble those notes. But I'll try to nutshell it here really quickly. The activation tour was or is a tour by Derek Brose, Ramiro Romani, and Miriam Gomez, I think is her last name. And what they are doing is they are touring the country, stopping in various cities, promoting their promoting an important message about technology, spiritual health and wellness, and ultimately privacy as well, and ultimately what you can do to address the problems that we are facing in the world for those that have some concerns about the state of affairs. And the day began with a community garden or time spent cleaning a community garden from noon until two o'clock. We took a two-hour break, and then the main event and discussion was at another local place, Yorktown Lanes, in a back room where they have an event center. They had some nice food prepared, and the day or the evening began with a guided meditation before we dove into some long talks about technology, alternative operating systems to Windows and iOS. And then Derek closed out the talk with everything that he's been working on for the past few years regarding the conscious resistance and his work with the Freedom Cell Network. But like I said, more on that in the future. Now, what we read today was about our meditation practice and how we need to, how, well, first of all, how important it is in our life and how if our current practice is no longer serving us, how we ought to consider changing our spiritual practice. And because it's still dark, because it's morning, I'm entirely paraphrasing and I'm unable to review notes, but I think a lot of us have lost touch with how well how important, quite frankly, the spiritual self is. We've over the past few generations, in my opinion, we've gotten very caught up with the Western American way of life. You know. You know, maybe instead of a BMW, a nice Tesla. Our free time is oftentimes spent doing things to get us as far away mentally and oftentimes physically from the very thing that provides us the income to do so. We so frequently live in homes and places that we simply can't afford driving vehicles that we have to make payments on, buying things to impress people. We don't necessarily even know for reasons we can't fully articulate because we don't understand those either. We've lost touch with who we are as a people. We've lost touch with our own humanity, and I believe that a lot of that has come from growing distant from our creator or the relationship that we have with him, whether you refer to that universe. But it doesn't change the fact that we've grown apart from our own internal and collective spirit, if you will. Right. Now, myself personally, I was born into a family that a religious family. We attended church on the regular every Sunday. A lot of people aren't, and a lot of people may not have that idea of spirituality, in my case through religion. They may not have that idea of spirituality at all. And that's that's why I oftentimes like to talk about it because I think spiritual the spiritual component of life is integral to personal growth and development, and really this path that we talk about called all-around growth. If we're lacking in one dimension of our growth, be it physical, emotional, spiritual, all of those things, all of those aspects of health and wellness, if we're lacking in any one of those, it's almost like removing spokes from the wheel. And when we do that, we compromise the integrity of the wheel. And when you are traveling and utilizing a wheel that's compromised, it's only a matter of time before it fails due to its structural integrity being compromised and lacking. And it's difficult because so frequently we go through life and we put far more effort and energy into our the health and wellness of our career, while our physical health declines. We put too much focus into our emotional health to where our career declines, for example. I don't know, any number of things is possible when we are not in complete balance. So if you are not in a place where you have a spiritual practice in place, something active, I would encourage you to pick up a book, something simple as 365 DAO, which I'll link to in the show notes. Daily devotionals. It's a very easy way to begin engaging in some sort of spiritual practice. I'll see if I can pull up some links to Andrew Johnson as well. Andrew Johnson's apps for guided meditation, relaxation, and he's got a number of recordings that are specific to whatever it is that you're looking to work on in your life. So as I approach work, I'm again a little uncertain about where we're parking, and because it looks like we are in the same situation again, I'm going to cut it off early, guys. Just encourage you to check out the show notes. And again, thank you for your time. I appreciate you tuning in today. This is Rob Kaiser, and thank you.
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