what is happening in your spiritual life?

Famously bad at question text, I’ll let the title spi. I wonder if the ilx cognoscenti make time for this

Growing desire to serve people. Feel like I need to move churches in the near future for the sake of more personal"discipline." Yet to convince the wife though.

I'm super into meditation and woo dharma stuff (see meditation people roll call thread) but right now my spiritual path seems to mainly consist of regular old mental health stuff and trying to act like a decent human being towards myself and others.

I've had multiple meditation teachers tell me I should be more concerned with self-compassion than being able to focus on the breath. It took me a while to even understand what self-compassion is and what it feels like. I still can't conjure it on demand but I'm way better now at noticing when I'm doing the opposite.

I will say meditation helps along the way. When life seems really hard, sitting still for an hour can be really healing.

330 am bio break / prayer worship moment

Growing desire to serve people.

can relate! I wouldn't say serve people exactly but I am def feeling like I wanna be more supportive of my friends and others and make fewer demands on them... one effect I feel after quitting weed in the very long term is I'm more aware of how demanding I have sometimes been in the past and especially more aware of others' sensitivities and like all this stuff should have been obvious to me when I was 25 but I was quite out of touch with reality then, so it wasn't. Things are more lucid now but it's sorta crept up on me. I feel like I can be really gentle now in a way that I didn't know how to before, at least I hope so.

I've largely stopped listening to rock music which I love but I guess it can trigger some reactions in me that don't seem totally healthy.

Reading a couple of research papers by (redacted) in September has reaffirmed my view of the Zhouyi text as a kind of ideographic, polysemous symbol matrix. I've excelled at this approach to divination in the past but it's something I've struggled with since I got a smartphone in late 2020. the interpretive rigmarole of it and internet brain are not a mix, so I'm committed to spending way less time on the internet.

I guess the thing I have to be careful of with divination is thinking too much and fueling introspection. It's always a struggle to be more present and think less. I think I've got better at catching myself going down that wormhole.

so I'm committed to spending way less time on the internet

i really struggle with this!

breaking habits is hard!