When we first come to spirituality, we learn new things, feel new things, become more engaged with life, and experience enlightening moments that are both exciting and invigorating.
But sometimes, after practicing for a while with the new spiritual tools we’ve received and perhaps joining a spiritual community, we may wake up one day and realize that we’ve gotten into a certain groove, a routine that we do without much thought.
When this happens, it is difficult to know if we have made any spiritual progress at all or if we are just going through the motions and performing our spirituality with the same robotic consciousness we were trying to rid ourselves of in the first place.
In the process of working towards long-term spirituality, how do we know if our spiritual practices have become rote?
One point of reference is to note that if we aren’t different than we were six months ago or one year ago, then perhaps we are indeed in a rut. At the forefront of our mind and heart should be the honest desire to bring ourselves to another spiritual level and to rid ourselves of the selfishness, fears, and negativities that keep us mired in the small world of our own ego.
This doesn’t mean that we have to achieve some dramatic evolution in ourselves and become totally different people in a day. But if we haven’t moved forward on our spiritual path to become a little better than we were yesterday, then we may be enjoying our routine, but we’re not receiving the full benefits our spiritual path has to offer. Yes, those benefits require a certain openness combined with internal work and spiritual effort, and gaining those benefits can sometimes be difficult and painful. But if they are indeed allowing us a deeper connection to Divine Light, then they are certainly worth every ounce of effort that we put into them.
