Goals Drive Progress
Goals are an extremely important part of progress. You need them to motivate action. They help you define your practice and to guide each decision during the process. A goal also aids you in knowing when you’re done.
Your passion before a goal is vapid and cannot take it’s true form. If it takes form at all it is directionless and risks being unimportant work.
Your passion before a goal is vapid and cannot take it’s true form. If it takes form at all it is directionless and risks being unimportant work.
The Goal is not the Practice
Your goals are based on your desires, your desires are attachments and attachment is the root of suffering. It’s important to have goals because without them there is no motion. It’s also important to reduce and eliminate suffering. How do we reconcile the two?
We come to terms with this dichotomy by understanding that the goal is not the practice. The practice is the path you take to get there, your daily activities. The goal guides you in deciding which path to take, deciding when, what and how to practice. Sometimes you are walking on a path someone else has already built, sometimes you are building your own. You never know how long the path is, which direction it travels next, how many pointless loops the path has, or if you’ll have to climb the highest mountain along the way.
There is no map and you may never arrive. Realize only that you are on your way somewhere. You may have chosen your path well, and you may arrive. You may also have chosen poorly according to your goals and never reach them. If you treat every step along the way as beautiful and important in its own right, you create the potential of reaching the end, but also release yourself of the attachment of ever arriving. In this way you will arrive exactly where you are supposed to be, and you'll be at that perfect place every day.
We come to terms with this dichotomy by understanding that the goal is not the practice. The practice is the path you take to get there, your daily activities. The goal guides you in deciding which path to take, deciding when, what and how to practice. Sometimes you are walking on a path someone else has already built, sometimes you are building your own. You never know how long the path is, which direction it travels next, how many pointless loops the path has, or if you’ll have to climb the highest mountain along the way.
There is no map and you may never arrive. Realize only that you are on your way somewhere. You may have chosen your path well, and you may arrive. You may also have chosen poorly according to your goals and never reach them. If you treat every step along the way as beautiful and important in its own right, you create the potential of reaching the end, but also release yourself of the attachment of ever arriving. In this way you will arrive exactly where you are supposed to be, and you'll be at that perfect place every day.
Trust in your Practice
What does this mean for you every day? Trust in your practice. If you have a particularly challenging training session where it seems like nothing is going right, you have to believe in your heart that progress was made. You took a step on the path. You might not be able to measure the progress, but it has been made.
In the first few sessions of slackline, this is apparent. Everyone’s foot wobbles on the line under the pressure of that first step. There is likely not a person ever who has been completely steady on their first step. Normally the earth doesn’t move under your feet so you haven’t yet needed the muscles it takes to stabilize. However, if you step on the line enough, practice through the wobble and trust that it will get better, then one day the wobble seems to magically go away.
In the first few sessions of slackline, this is apparent. Everyone’s foot wobbles on the line under the pressure of that first step. There is likely not a person ever who has been completely steady on their first step. Normally the earth doesn’t move under your feet so you haven’t yet needed the muscles it takes to stabilize. However, if you step on the line enough, practice through the wobble and trust that it will get better, then one day the wobble seems to magically go away.
In Slack We Trust
This takes place in less obvious ways too. I recently fell onto a longline and had a great deal of pain as a result. I didn't have to go through any healing, so I was back up on the line the next weekend. The session after my injury was absolutely the worst. I could barely stand on the line, and when I did the fear of being hurt again permeated every step. The tension in my body would not leave despite meditation, breath and attempted focus. I left the session feeling defeated, like nothing had been done and I started questioning whether my goals were reasonable.
I came back and thought seriously about my goals. In reflection I realized that it was my attachment to my goals that made things hard for me. My body and mind needed to work through the fear of pain, but I was making my goals the practice. I needed to be completely in the practice, to trust in my body’s ability to understand its needs and trust that just being on the line would create the space for that progress.
I trust that progress was made. I can’t see the progress, and I definitely don’t feel it. Slackline is the path I've chosen to reach my goals of peace, strength and balance. In slack I trust.
I came back and thought seriously about my goals. In reflection I realized that it was my attachment to my goals that made things hard for me. My body and mind needed to work through the fear of pain, but I was making my goals the practice. I needed to be completely in the practice, to trust in my body’s ability to understand its needs and trust that just being on the line would create the space for that progress.
I trust that progress was made. I can’t see the progress, and I definitely don’t feel it. Slackline is the path I've chosen to reach my goals of peace, strength and balance. In slack I trust.
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