Just be your better self and not act like a saint

Learning Point No 139

We must not only cultivate our best in church on a Sunday but should have at least a bit of this best as a habit on the other days of the week. To put on the best everyday would be a strain and end up feeling unnatural and stress out. There will be no peace but more dis-ease or unease. How then can we be at peace and be with God or saint?

Similarly, when one cultivates mindfulness for a few minutes of the day, we may feel refresh but mindfulness or meditation is not just for that special time of the day when we want to recharge the peace of our spirit, but we hope that by doing a concentrated effort once a day, we can have in the other times of the day and night, a better mental predisposition to be a bit more peaceful and collected -- a wee bit more connected with spiritual bliss.

But to try to have full meditation or mindfulness 24 hours a day is to be what we have yet to be. We can only do so in concerted effort for that special allotted time of the day but to do so all the time will tire us out as we are yet far from being a saint or buddha.

We need to ensure that by having special session per day, part of the experience will be ingrained habit during the whole day outside the session.

The session is a training in as ample or as optimal an environment to enable us to cultivate a little more of peace for the rest of the day.

Surely, we can try to be a saint on the special occasion of the day but not throughout the day.

We have to be ourselves but hopefully the meditation or prayer session be the training ground for imbuing or inculcating more peace as sort of force of habit in our day-to-day life outside the session.

So do be yourself and don't try to be a saint or buddha the whole day when you can at best only be a bit more a buddha or saint only during prayer or allotted meditation session.

Sometimes, we cannot even have that special session in the day or go to church on a Sunday. That should be alright so long as you can have a little bit more mindfulness and peace coming naturally throughout your day and life.

It is this which is more important than that special session. It is this improvement that the special session or weekly church attendance hopes to nurture in your day-to-day life

Know thyself and improve incrementally in small steps so you will be less likely to back track. Just be your better self and not act like a saint when are not one as yet. Otherwise, you risk being burnt-out and keel over. Better to be only a wee bit more saintly outside church, meditation or prayer. That would be more sustainable and manageable. That would be within comfort zone of your good self.

Take small steps in spirituality. Little drops of water will in time make a mighty ocean.