Operation Achieve Anything: Day One-Hundred-Thirteen, Dateline 4-23-2018
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“Everything can be used as an invitation to meditation. A smile, a face in the subway, the sight of a small flower growing in the crack of a cement pavement, a fall of rich cloth in a shop window, the way the sun lights up flower pots on a window sill. Be alert for any signs of beauty or grace. Offer up every joy, be awake at all moments, to the news that is always arriving out of silence (Rainer Maria Rilke).”
Good morning Crickets!!! Welcome to day number one-hundred-thirteen of Operation Achieve Anything. Hopefully, this is the last day that the Achieve Anything… book focuses on religion and/or prayer because I would prefer for this to be the last time I comment on the subject, at least as far as this particular challenge goes.
For one, I’m still super annoyed that I’m over a quarter of the way through this book and the focus is still just generic self-help concepts in a way that feels like it’s never going to shift gears in order to focus on actual goal achieving advice which is the whole reason I started this challenge. Again, based on the title of the book, I thought the advice would be more along the lines of things like how to organize your time or techniques for contacting people who might be able to help me achieve the said anything in the book’s title.
Also, as I said since the topic of religion has been brought up, as an Atheist, I always get offended when I’m told to do something religiously-based while being told that it’s not actually religious, it’s more spiritual. It’s always put out there that it’s no big deal to just to give into a belief system in order to play along just for a little bit, which I pointed out yesterday reminds me of someone pestering a vegan to just eat a little meat and then calling them uptight for not ditching their choice in order to play along since, “It’s not like I’m asking you to change your lifestyle.”
The more I started to think about it, this type of type of, “just give it a shot anyways,” approach to pushing anything spiritual to a non-believer reminds me of straight people who try to “convert” a homosexual or at least just try it out for one night, using the theory that they just have tried the right ________ (fill in the blank.) Yeah, it may seem like no big deal to the person doing the pushing, but since they are already on board, I don’t think they realize just how often people who are different are constantly being shoved. I mean, I can’t even buy a donut without being reminded who you trust.
So with that, I’m going to consider that this rant fulfills the needs of yesterdays task and move on to today’s assignment where I am supposed to sit in silence as the book once again wants me to practice meditation without worrying about using any specific techniques. Though I don’t like how most forms of meditation fall into this not religious but spiritual but is actually a religious trap, I do really want to figure out a technique that works for me that doesn’t require following a guru.
I’ll delve more into my history with meditation when I check in with tomorrow’s update where today’s assignment will be the star. Until then, it’s time to wrap this up as usual and sign off saying, good day and good luck to you and all of your projects.
Talk to you soon.
Sincerely,
The Wicker Breaker
P.S. Below are links to my novel, which I plan to promote as part of Operation Achieve Anything, as well as a link to where you can buy the book that is providing the structure to this project in case you would like to purchase it in order to play along.
