The Joy Of Discipline

I prepare to reflect on discipline, and I think right now of the natural world. How, as beautiful and lovely as it is, it also has its own discipline. The sun rises and sets at the same time each day. The tides come in and go out with regularity. The evening comes without fail. Nature has its own discipline and its own way.

It is also important for me to develop a consistency of spirituality. It is essential to spend time each day settling into that space of inner peace, just watching the thoughts, just resting. It is essential each day to explore this question: Who am I? Beyond the edges of my daily life, I am able to experience myself as something more than my name and identity. I am able to experience myself as pure peace, as light, luminous, radiant, eternal.

When I touch this space inside myself daily, I begin to feel a sense of freedom and joy, and the disciplines that may have once seemed hard become sources of great pleasure because they plug me back in to my true peace. And when the storms of life come, if I stay anchored in that discipline of a daily practice, then I too will experience peace consistently within me. Peace will become as reliable as the sunrise and the sunset, as reliable as the coming of evening. It will become a consistent presence in my life, and that discipline will awaken freedom and pure joy.