Practice, by Mark Houston.

Practice, by Mark Houston:

Spiritual success is gained by daily cultivation. 

If you practice for the day, you have won.

If you are lazy for the day, you have lost.

Self-cultivation is the heart of spiritual attainment. 

Gaining insight and ability is not a matter of grand statements, 

dramatic initiations or sporadic moments of enlightenment,

Those things are only highlights in a life of consistent activity.

Whatever system of spirituality you practice, do it every day.

If it's prayer, then pray every day.

If it's meditation, then meditate every day.

If it is exercise, then exercise every day.

Only then will you be able to say that you are truly practicing spirituality.

This methodical approach is reassuring in several ways.

First, it provides you with a process and a means 

to maintain progress even if that particular day is not inspiring or significant. 

Just to practice is already good.

Second it will give you a certain faith. 

If you practice every day it is inevitable you will gain from it. 

Third, constant practice gives you a certain satisfaction:

how can you say to yourself you have truly entered your spiritual path, 

unless you have had years of daily practice 

and can take comfort in the momentum that it has given you?

(Mark Houston passed away in 2010. God bless him and his work.)