A New Day 1: Integrity and Spiritual Ecology

I’ve mentioned several times within this blog that I graduated with my Master’s degree in Spiritual Psychology from a school called the University of Santa Monica.  One of the concepts that is taught at USM is a concept called spiritual ecology. Spiritual ecology is the practice of reviewing all of your commitments and discarding any commitments that no longer serve.  At the same time, the practice calls for recommitting and/or reevaluating any commitments you plan on keeping.  My teachers always advised us to be realistic about our commitments for it is far better to under commit and complete what you have committed to then to overcommit and to leave it undone.  

This practice, both supports and highlights a quality which is essential to any spiritual practice—the quality of integrity.  The heart of integrity emphasizes honesty and keeping one’s word.  In the spirit of that, I feel that I must be completely transparent in writing this blog.  I committed nine days ago to beginning again and completely underestimated both the challenges I’ve been going through and my own inner resistance to completing this project.  

Given those factors, I am compelled to begin again today after having reevaluated my commitment.  This project and this blog means absolutely nothing if I cannot be completely transparent about everything that I am experiencing.  It also means very little if I cannot complete what I have committed to here on paper, and in the last week, I found that I was not able to complete my practice in the way that I described it.  

I, then, of course, have two choices.  I can start over today considering today to be a new day one of my project or I can surrender the entire project altogether.  I have thought about it at length whether or not I would be satisfied with discarding everything I have been working on for the last couple years and moving on, but they say, “how you do anything is how you do everything “ and so I am driven to continue.  Inwardly, I am not complete with the quest I have begun for the confirmation of spiritual truth.

Therefore, after reviewing my commitment, I am recommitting to a spiritual practice of five days a week which will consist of three different spiritual interventions including prayer, affirmations and forgiveness work.  The practice itself takes close to three hours a day, and I am hoping that it will yield the results that I have described in earlier blog entries.  

I know now that I cannot underestimate either the challenges that I have been facing externally in my every day life or the inner resistance to completing this project.  I continue to do the work to overcome them both.  I do know that as difficult as it may be to complete this project, it will be more than worth it if I can demonstrate that the spiritual ideals thatI cling to as my foundation are pure truth.

And so again, I wish you well until my next blog entry.




“The Climb”,  Miley Cyrus

Hannah Montana:The Movie, March 5, 2009, Hollywood— Walt Disney

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