Today marks the 150th consecutive day that I have, without fail, engaged in a set spiritual practice. I started around the new year (2015), checked in after four weeks and again 100 days in. It started from a feeling of dissolution, a need to reconnect to a path toward a higher self. My real self.

Every morning, I:

• Read spiritual literature (this and this and this)
• Pray (this prayer or this or this)
• Write a letter to God in my journal (this morning it looked like the photo)
• Meditate 5-15 minutes (from the CD included with this book, or from audio at this site)

This practice is entirely about steady, slow progress. Sometimes I feel inspired and connected. Sometimes my practice is at best perfunctory. But I do it. I have done it enough, now, that I feel a bit superstitious about it.

What will befall me if I skip? says a small, fearful voice. Nothing, certainly. Just as this practice does not make me saintly, neither will skipping make me less a person. But I don’t ever want to feel as low as I began. I feel continuing to do this allows me to in general keep moving away from that place. I worry if I stop that I will start to drift back there.

The “letters to God” that I write are for the most part the same set of ideas over and over. I mostly pray for knowledge of the next right thing, and for the willingness to carry that out. I merely write that letter in order to have tangible proof that I did my practice today. It’s something I can see.

So, 150 days of something so simple is no great accomplishment. But for someone as distracted, willful, and self absorbed as I am . . . it is not nothing. So I take pleasure and am grateful for the wherewithal to keep on this path. Others have expressed interest, so I keep reporting in.