What is Practice and What is if For?

[PureX]

That's a really interesting way of putting it. I'll have to think about that framing a bit more. I wonder if we are often that intentional about this purpose. Intention is often considered a central component of mindfulness and our sense of purpose. What happens when the intention isn't there when practicing?

In a way that’s when it’s most important. When we aren’t ‘feeling it’. That’s when we rely on those tools the most. To hold us to course when we can’t see where we’re going, or why.

 

[PureX]

As a Taoist I don’t seek to be a ‘better man’, or closer to God, or anything like that. I do not wish to unravel the great mystery or please a creator. I simply want to be what I am. To be authentically myself. And I just assume this to be my intended purpose. After all, how could it not be?

So I am not religious in the sense that I am seeking to fulfill some theological ideal or to please some God. But I do have a set of ‘spiritual tools’ that I have found useful in helping me to stay aligned with the Tao, as they say. Gratitude, humility, honesty, calm, … these are states of being that I find lead me to that authenticity. So I will practice at maintaining these states by whatever methods I find to be useful In that regard.

 

[Ella S.]

For me, practice involves working towards the production of truth in myself and others. Luckily, I don't have to presuppose that any of us know the truth, because I think it can be found through rational thought, research, and sometimes discourse.

 

[wellwisher]

I suppose "bettering" could be interchanged with being more entuned and/or balanced? Yet being such is beneficial and thus "bettering" in that regard?

Th purpose of practice is to develop will power and choice, via the practice needed to reach the goal of perfection. Perfect will take practice.

For example, say you were of average physical ability and wanted to learn how to do a gymnastic tumbling run, composed of several front and side flips and twists, with a stick landing. Under your own original inertia, on your first trial, you will crash and burn, since your innate nature is not equipped to do this; your physical and emotional determinism is set. On the first try you can grind your teeth and will and choose all your want, but crash and burn will happen by deterministic default; pre-defined result.

As you overcome the disappointment and pain, continue to practice and start to pick up the various skills as you condition your body to take the pain of falls, one day you do a reasonable tumbling run, that you could not do when you started. You have demonstrated your will and choice to continue practice against the pain, with this will and chose, over time, able to reprogram your default deterministic origin.

Often in discussions of will and choice versus, determinism, people compare in terms of immediate results. Will and choice appears to fall short of determinism; choose to stop drinking, which works for a few day and then back to determinism. But with practice, we can start with our original determinism; default ability, but with will and choice and repetition to practice, we slowly starts to reprogram the brain and body, until will power appears, to have an edge over the original determinism.

Things like character are not something one is born with. Determinism or default is more connected to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Character takes will and choice to practice good choices to learn over a lifetime, against the inertia of your original innate and the pitfalls of collective determinism. Will is needed for practice, even if the result is initially deterministic crash and burn. But, overtime, practice can reprogram the brain and body of its original determinism; lifetime of practice until character and wisdom appear. One is not born this way, but through choices we make; put into practice, over time, we change the original determinism into choice.

People go to self help groups and lectures to alter their determinism so they can have more choices.

 

[Bear Wild]

In a way that’s when it’s most important. When we aren’t ‘feeling it’. That’s when we rely on those tools the most. To hold us to course when we can’t see where we’re going, or why.

For me religion is about relationship to the greater world. It is a very different experience just reading and thinking about it compared to mentally and physically participating in ritual to maintain oneself with the relations. It is the difference between reading or watching a program about the forest compared to entering into the forest and connecting with all that is there. When my neighbors and I get together for ritual celebrating the eight celebrations of the year from Samhain to the fall equinox, the music, telling of the myths, participating in ritual connections with the earth with ceremony, music and occasionally even dance creates a more profound connection that is definitely embodied. Even the simple daily rituals of greeting the morning or leaving offerings to all the beings around maintains a sacred connection.