Closing the Day

Each day is a gift, latent with possibility, ready for me to use and enjoy. My awareness is part of that gift, and I find it helpful to turn my awareness to a period of reflection at the beginning and end of each day.

Last week, I described a morning practice, Opening the Day, where I focus my awareness on a prompt, intention, or inquiry. Today, I want to share an evening practice, Closing the Day, which helps me process and reflect on my experiences in the evening.

I start by taking a few minutes to sit and settle into my body, letting my outer and inner activity begin to quiet. I might take a few deep breaths and feel where my muscles are tense, allowing them to release, allowing gravity to hold me. If my mind is agitated and relaxation doesn’t want to come naturally, I don’t force it. The point is to slow down and see what is present in the body.

I invite my higher self to arrive, the part of me that is always connected to my inherent goodness and wisdom, that wants the best for me, that supports me and guides my actions. I sit with my higher self and let things settle to whatever level of calm feels natural.

From this place of open awareness and acceptance, I look back over the day and see what stands out. Where was I connected to my higher self and where was I gripped by the fears of the ego self? What happened that caused me to open or contract? Where did I meet events with awareness and where was I unconscious or reactive?

I revisit the prompt I chose for the day. How did it go? Did I touch-in with this inquiry as the day unfolded? What happened when I did?

There are many evenings when I realize I’ve hardly thought about my prompt, perhaps not even once. Here is where I encounter the most critical moment of the practice – when I start to feel shame or recrimination. I try to greet these unhelpful thoughts with gentleness. They come from the ego self, which is more interested in achieving than learning. The ego self wants to present a perfected image, and the process of inquiry and insight feels painful because it shows our imperfections.

Standing with clarity in this first moment is crucial and, for me, very hard. I tend to lambaste myself: “You failed again; you’re a pretty poor mystic; who are you kidding; you should give up this spiritual bullshit and go back to perfecting your shallow shell of an ego, something you’re good at.”

But my higher self just smiles. She reminds me that any spiritual practice is a discovery practice, an awareness practice, a compassion practice, including compassion for myself. The one thing it is not is an achievement practice. Transformation happens in its own time, spontaneously, with irregular jumps and twisty back roads.

The purpose of the inquiry is to learn the next piece about my true nature. No matter the outcome of a particular day, or my expectations, I can always learn something about the next piece. That is the process, that is the path. We have to give ourselves credit for the courage it takes to show up for the practice and not allow our old habit of self-judgment to derail us.

So, from this stance of non-judgment, I ask – what happened? This is a listening phase. I spend time here, going past my first impressions. Sometimes, I realize that my initial prompt was a starting point for something deeper I did not know was there.

Let’s consider an example. I may have picked a phrase like this for my inquiry, “I want to be more patient. Today, help me slow down and take things as they come.” Upon reflection in the evening, I might find that I was irritated at people all day – in traffic, in the checkout line, on the phone, in conversation – my actions the very picture of impatience.

But this is not a failure. As I look, I start to realize there is fear beneath my impatience: I’m afraid there is not enough time, that I have to keep running, that my worth depends on how much I get done. This insight is far more valuable than forcing myself to be patient through gritted teeth and a fake smile.

It’s also comforting to know that things are happening below the surface of the conscious mind. I’m planting seeds that may not break above ground for a while. We are growing our souls every day and that is worth celebrating. Every step is in the direction of growth, even when they seem to falter.

Photo by Green Liu on Unsplash