Ninety days ago, I committed to writing and posting daily to this blog in attempt to better understand Eckhart Tolle’s quote from The Power of Now, “There is and always has been only one spiritual teaching.” Themes that have emerged include oneness, non-duality, enlightenment, harmony and the path each of us takes in search of our own spirituality. We’ve looked at many books and the concepts within them. We’ve evaluated pop music and the meaning behind the lyrics. I’ve shared scenes from movies I love and used them in attempt to entertain and inspire thought. We’ve looked at many different organized religions, the belief systems within them and some of the ancient and modern spiritual writings that are used to spread their teachings. We’ve scratched the surface of religion, psychology and philosophy looking for common threads to the “one teaching.”
When I started, I didn’t know how long I’d be able to keep up with the daily posts. I only knew that I wanted to take on, what was to me, a massive goal of writing and posting daily. I have kept up with this practice now for ninety consecutive days. My incredible partner in crime, my wife Maria, supported me and helped me by editing every single post and encouraging me to keep going. For someone who considers himself to be a mediocre writer at best, this has been quite an adventure for me and I have learned so many lessons as part of the process. Here are a few:
- Posting daily was a huge commitment considering that this project was something I would have to “fit into” my day as a full-time business owner. I simply did not have the time to thoroughly edit and critique myself, which was likely to result in self-judgment. I was more proud of some posts than others. I always strived for excellence, but some days I had more time than others. Excellence looks different on a day where I only have thirty minutes to write than it does when I can work on a post for longer. When you have a goal and a deadline, you do the best you can in the time you have, and in my case, there was no time for self-criticism. The result was an incredible letting go of self-criticism! Letting go of self-judgment every day for ninety days has helped me to build confidence. Confidence equals lack of self-judgment!
- Each day I wrote roughly 500 words. Ninety days later I have a Word document with 50,000 words. I am a person who loves to read personal growth books. The average personal growth book is 40,000 to 70,0000 words. As much as I love reading these books, I never thought I could possibly write one myself. I happen to know that there is far more that goes into publishing a book than just writing itself, but that’s certainly a huge part of it. Whether or not anything I’ve written in these blog posts is worthy of a book, I have at the very least, proven to myself that I can write 50,000 words. Consistency was the key and something that seemed unachievable got done a little bit at a time.
- Creating a blog and committing to others that I would post daily forced accountability. I recognize that no one cares as much as I do whether I post daily or not, but it is important to me that I do what I say. Committing to you, the reader, has made it much easier to follow through. If I had kept my writing private in a journal, I would have been more inclined to miss a day here and there. Without those who encouraged me along the way, I likely would not have kept going as long as I did.
Letting go, consistency, and accountability were only a few of the principles that have guided me over the last ninety days. I’m sure that many other lessons will become clear as time passes and I continue in my writing. For now, however, I have decided to pause my daily posts and the “One Teaching” series to take time to reflect on the journey thus far and see what emerges. The word pause is intentional because I am by no means finished posting to this blog. It is only the frequency of posts that will slow for now. I am so thankful to all that have encouraged me along the way. Thank you so much, you know who you are.
I believe Eckhart Tolle’s statement, “There is and always has been only one spiritual teaching.” I believe we are all connected. I believe separation is an illusion. I believe that everything happens only in the present moment. I believe that past and future are simply memories or projections based on the filters through which we see them. I understand that everyone sees the world in their own unique way and that’s part of what makes us human. We are souls living a human experience. Our humanity is experienced individually but our souls are connected as one.
