THE CLIMB: THE PRACTICE

I've not been in this place maybe ever.

Not the loud noisy mornings where I have to stop and sit and be like okay who's hurting who's loud who needs attention and a lesson comes out of all that. Not the super deep conversations with God that leave me sitting in the chair wondering what I was just given. This was neither of those.

If you put a linear line and put pure calm nothingness right in the middle and then far left would be the ego loud and noisy and difficult and far right would be the deepest most clear spiritual downloads — it really didn't lean one way or the other. It just was.

And that was uncomfortable. That was foreign. And I had no idea what to do with it.

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I. The Call

There is a place in all of this where it's just quiet.

Not dramatic. Not a story. Not a lesson. Not a loud version of anything. Just is. And I'm learning that's normal. I'm learning that might actually be where the practice lives most of the time — not in the jaw-dropping moments, not in the noisy ones where I have to work through something, but right there in the middle of it all just doing the work.

Keep doing your daily practices. Keep doing the daily work. What you need will come just like it always has as long as you're staying true to your methods and the things that you know you need to do every day. Your non-negotiables.

So I just kept marching. Keep marching keep marching keep marching and right wrong or indifferent it will show its face and what it is.

That's all I had. And I kept going.

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II. The Fracture

So the question asked of me one morning was what is next.

And it came through a lot of thoughts and visions and stories of soccer. I know that industry. I know that culture. I've been in it for twenty plus years and it's comfortable to me. I really don't have to think too hard to see what I would do and how I would do it because of the years and the hours and the time I've invested in it.

I was on the phone every day with one or more buddies of mine and that's all we would talk about for years.

And what eventually came to me is it's not about soccer. That isn't my dream. That isn't my calling. And that's not the business that I want to grow. So what is. And why is soccer so comfortable. Because I know it.

It's the fear of hey you know this so let's keep dreaming about doing this and let's keep putting the stories in your head about doing this but that's not what you want to do so what is.

And that's where it all just came together.

I have to put the time in to no matter what it is. Just look at my spirituality, just look at my fitness, look how much time and effort I have invested into my daily work on that. And it wasn't a thought, it wasn't something that I decided to go do, I just started and kept doing it until it became what it is. Soccer was the same way. I showed up on the sideline. I showed up in the conversations. I showed up every day for over twenty years and that is how you build something. You just start and you show up every day and over time you know it. You understand it. You become somebody in it.

So the question is not how. I know how. I've done it more than once. The question is what.

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III. The Forge

It's really hard for me to explain because it's like there's this dividing wall.

On one side of it is myself, my spiritual practice, my well-being, my emotional state, everything that comes along with everything I've been working and building. Working out, eating properly, getting my mind and my body right. And on the other side of that wall is a sustainable living. The reality part of life. I need to survive. I need food, clothing, shelter, an income, a way of living.

And I'm having a hard time putting them together. Seeing that one path leads to the other. Or that they are the same path and this is just the particular juncture I'm at.

The spiritual emotional side — if I fall off for a while there are things that I lose but nothing turns off tomorrow. The business side falls off and I can go homeless. I can lose everything. And that difference is where I'm stuck. One has an immediate consequence. One has a longer one.

And then it came to me.

I started meditating with one minute years ago. I couldn't do more than a minute at a time. My mind just would not allow it. But I stuck to it. I kept going, kept growing, and I found my ways of doing it.

So what is my one minute in the business side. What is that first step that I take and say I'm doing this until I understand why and how and when and where. And I grow from that.

I didn't know where the spiritual practice was going to take me. I didn't need to know. I just needed to do one minute. And the next morning one more minute. And the next morning after that.

The business starts the same way.

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IV. The Collapse

There were days that came back to back that gave me nothing.

And then there was a morning.

I got into meditation and I was really just focusing on being in my heart with my parts, with God, my true self and Mother Earth. And the Jaguar song came on and he laid around my heart almost like a protective parent saying just be there I've got you protected you don't have to worry about anything other than being in your heart and being present there.

And it was quiet. Calm. Peaceful.

And then without even thinking about a mantra or an intention one formed. So what do I do. What is the next step. And from that place in the quiet something came through as loud as anything has come through in a long time.

The answer I'd been circling around for weeks. Clear. Unmistakable.

And I realized I'd been keeping it out of the conversation. Not on purpose and not without reason, the other things I was working through were real, they mattered — but somewhere in the back of me I knew I was keeping this out of the topic out of the subject to speak about. And this morning it came back louder than ever because that's what happens when you keep showing up even when nothing is coming.

The quiet accumulates. And then it delivers.

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V. The Return

Where does this live.

That's what came to me in meditation. Four words, from nowhere, not from a thought process, not from a vision, not from a lesson. It just came. Where does this live.

And I tried to get back to the place it came from and I couldn't. It just appeared from somewhere I couldn't return to consciously. And it won't go away so it's meaningful. It has purpose. It has a place.

Where does this live can be asked of everything. Any thought, any situation, anything inside your body that arises. Where does that live.

Does it live in the future. Then it hasn't happened yet and it may not happen so there's no need to carry it right now. What do I need to do today to get closer to it. That's all. Just today.

Does it live in the past. Then let it go. It's happened, it's over, process what you need to process and let it go.

Does it live now. Then do it. Work on it. Make it real.

And before I make any decision, before I take a step in a journey whether it's physically, emotionally, spiritually — before I take that step I simply ask where does this live.

Then I'll know what to do.

The other thing that came with it was this. The journaling is just as informative as the meditation in producing clarity. Some days the meditation is clear and gives me everything. Other days like this one it's a little cryptic, a little unclear, and what came in the meditation I couldn't fully understand until I started speaking about it. Until I started letting it out. And then through the process of finding the words it just hit me.

It's not just one thing. It's all of it. The meditation, the journaling, the silence, the sitting with it. They each mean something individually but all together is where I get the picture. All together is where I get some understanding whether the meditation was clear or not.

That's the process. And I need to start trusting the whole thing not just the parts of it that are giving me a lot in any given morning.

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VI. The Walk

Whatever you have today give all of that.

If you only have 40% and you give all of it then you gave 100%. That's the best you have today. That's all any of this requires. Not the best you've ever had. Not the clearest morning or the deepest meditation or the biggest breakthrough. Just what you have right now today and all of it.

The practice doesn't need you to have your best morning every morning. It needs you to show up to whatever morning you have. The loud ones. The quiet ones. The ones that give you everything. The ones that give you nothing. The ones right in the middle that feel like neither.

All of them count. All of them build toward something. Even when you can't see it.

Just keep marching keep marching keep marching and right wrong or indifferent it will show its face and what it is.

That is the practice.

That is the climb