all practices are meant to collapse
Confessions of St. Augustine
Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.
The spiritual path is a paradox; it is a journey until you reach the end and realize that there was no journey. It is to walk a thousand miles and yet to remain unchanging and unmoved.
Yet, in this linear and relative world, we move through a spiral staircase of practices and development. We tend to get stuck at certain places, however. We make ourselves comfortable. We are attracted by fame, power, money, followers, and spiritual powers (Man is A Shakti-Worshipper). We stop moving.
Yet, like always, we find a deep emptiness within our comfort zone. Ultimately, it all collapses around us. This forces us to move forward. In fact, every life situation pushes us forward.
So it is with spiritual practice. We may do all the rituals, the readings of sacred texts, and the ablutions. It may even work for us for a while. And then we are broken out of our comfort and forced to seek the next thing. The practices are meant to collapse around us. They are meant to bring us to completion in only this way.
For a time, I believed that I could fool my mind. If I simply found a way to do practice that would dull my mind, it would be perfect. I did this because I feared my mind. Every time I seemed to find a trick, it would stop working in mere days. This is actually a gift. This collapse has forced me to develop, to advance.
It is, therefore, better to embrace this. To be curious about what is to come.
Related: leave the reins in His hands.
[Update: After a few days musing on this, I think I have to clarify some of the language here. I don’t think that practices, in our colloquial use of the term are what collapse. Instead, it is our subjective experience of the practice that collapses. I think this follows naturally because <a href=“we%20are%20never%20unaffected.md” class=“internal-link”>we are never unaffected]
[For example, take the practice of Naam Jaap. Naam Jaap is effective at all stages and even enlightened beings still practice it. But, the subjective method of jaap changes. First, we begin with just parroting the Naam. Then, we move through various stages of devotion (I am being intentionally vague here since I believe that no two experiences will be the exact same). The practice remained constant, unchanging, but my practice changed. The parroting collapsed in on itself and led me to the next stages.]