Practice

The process of practice is as crucial as the goals of practice. Developing and living ideas is the process of my humanist practice. Reining in anger. Mobilizing compassion. Courageously looking at my own life under the light of rationality. This is the work, the process, of humanist practice as I seek to live it. 

I do not seek to be a paragon of any moral or ethical measure. That is the realm of celebrity, not practice. I could write and market a book on practice, but that is not my current humanist practice. I strongly believe that persisting in my own practice, which includes sharing these essays publicly, is a worthwhile process for my life. If and when my sharing of my own practice resonates in the life of another person, my own practice is strengthened with the knowledge that I am not alone in my single attempt to improve my own human condition. 

The ancients spoke of practice in terms of mastery, a masculine and patriarchal concept. I seek no mastery. My own mind is like a bag of eels. It requires constant taming. I do not strive to become a serene icon. The serene icon is simply that: A serene idol. This is fine for altars and movies. My life is neither an altar nor a movie.

My life is a flowing river of change leading to an inevitable merging with a great ocean of time and space. That river carves channels and is also channeled by its banks. Learning to be the river in a conscious way with a limited aptitude for guiding its own current is how practice often feels to me in its best moments.