One of the people whose blog I read regularly participates in the Witch’s Weekly exercise. I haven’t decided to commit to answering the questions every week myself, but I particularly likeed this week’s set of questions. So I thought I’d take a run at them.

Do you feel that you are active in your spirituality?
I’m not as active as I’d like to be. I’ve recently been trying to get more pro-active about my spiritual development. This month, I’ve been starting to do fifteen minute breathing meditations. I hope to eventually get this to be a daily part of my practice, but I readily admit that I’m far from it right now. (I’m lucky if I get to it two or three times a week.)

This is one of those cases where I know I need more self-discipline. Unfortunately, I think it’s too easy in Paganism to not take active, experiential steps like this. We spend so much time reading books about Paganism, that we tend to put the books aside and do our meditations, our devotions, and other things. Or maybe it’s just me and I’m projecting my own failings on others. Who can say? But it’s certainly something I’m working on correcting in my life.

What do you consider to be the most tedious task in your path?
This depends on my state of mind. In days when I let myself fool myself into thinking I’m “too busy,” it’s easy to claim that the meditation work is tedious. It’s one of those things that it’s easy to say “I don’t have the time, and I’m not really getting anything out of it, anyway.”

But when I actually stop and think about it — and when I’ve actually been doing the meditations, I know that’s a bunch of bull. Currently, my goal is fifteen minutes. And I know I can make fifteen minutes to meditate. I just have to be brutally honest about how much time (several times longer than fifteen minutes, I assure you) I waste watching television and surfing the web. I could easily take fifteen minutes away from these activities to do my meditation.

And when I’m doing it, I realize just how much I really do get out of it. I feel much calmer. I feel more energetic. And I feel like I could conquer the world and do anything. When I stop and think about it, I have to admit that the only reason I find it “tedious” is that I’m being wrong-headed — and bull-headed — about it.

What is your most enjoyable part of your spirituality?

I think what I really like about it is the nature of the “call” involved. As time goes on, I feel a gentle, loving “call” to my spirituality. My recent desire to gain more self-discipline is the result of such a gentle “call.” It’s this sense that I know I need to do these things, yet it completely lacks condemnation for not doing these things in the past. It’s the fact that I can always look at where I am, pat myself on the back, and yet feel that pull to climb ever onward and upward. It’s both challenging and encouraging.