Quiet, daily magic

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Sound familiar?

It’s what a lot of contemporary U.S. American mainstream spirituality marketplaces sound like. Whether the product is an object (like crystals) or an experience (like a yoga video series), the promise is the same: immediate, powerful change in your life.

To look at this generously, this is manifestation in action. If you think you’re going to be transformed by a 10-day yoga video series, then you’re more likely to actually be transformed.

To look at this cynically, this is spiritual capitalism. Others have described this as infomercial spirituality: an approach that sells you on the idea of change or transformation, but which leaves you stranded when the intervention doesn’t have its promised effect.

My dad used to have a saying: “If it is free, it is for me.”

And there are a lot of free and low-cost spiritual healing resources out there (like this blog!), no trip to Bali required*.

But sometimes, the best spiritual resource in the world can’t hold a candle to the daily work you can do, on your own, with your own mind and emotions.

No big flashy spiritual moments. Just the quiet magic of showing up for yourself day after day.

To illustrate:

I recently defended my dissertation, which is still a miracle to me, given how terrified I was to work on it every single day.

Literally.

I would wake up in fear. Spend hours in bed or on my phone avoiding work, then feel so guilty that I’d drag myself through breakfast and yoga, at which point I’d either reduced myself to tears or felt utterly awful.

But then something would happen. Once I’d finally dragged myself to the coffee shop, three or more hours after I’d intended to get there…

And sat down to write…

(Sometimes journaling for an hour or more before starting…)

I found that I was able to start working.

It didn’t make the work easy, or fun. But it was bearable.

And after about twenty minutes of bearing the discomfort, I often got into flow.

Or at the very least, I felt proud enough of myself that I could keep going for an hour or two.

And then I did it all over the next day.

Some days, it took me three, four, five extra hours to get to the coffee shop and start working.

Some days, I didn’t get to the coffee shop at all.

But other days, I got there way sooner and with less angst.

And I worked that way, day after day, for a year and a half until I finally finished my dissertation.

The reason I’m sharing this with you is because, particularly for people with strong work emotions (like fear) and habits (like procrastination), it can feel tempting to try to make yourself feel better before starting on work.

And what better way to “make yourself feel better” than through the latest shiny spiritual practice?

This is called spiritual bypass, which is defined as our “tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks.”

I would expand that to: our tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to avoid our real life. The practical, material things that need to get done day to day, and the emotions that get in the way of that.

In the Enneagram tradition, type Fours (“the individualist”) are particularly prone to this kind of bypassing. As Riso & Hudson write in The Wisdom of the Enneagram, “Fours tend to wait for inspiration to strike, but inspiration has a better chance of getting through to you if your daily schedule and living space are arranged in ways that support your creativity, your physical and emotional health, and above all your active engagement with the world.”

Even as an Enneagram type Two, I fall into this trap all the time. In fact, I spent all day procrastinating on drafting this post, and felt totally awful about myself — just like when I used to let fear prevent me from making progress on my dissertation chapters.

But I did eventually turn it in!

So here’s how I did it.

(Spoiler alert: no 10-day quick fix. In fact, you won’t even feel that much better. My apologies!)

Desensitize yourself to the project bit by bit.

When I first decided to start working on my dissertation for real, I would congratulate myself for even being able to sit down with my chapter document open on my computer!

Next, I practiced just sitting there with my document open for two hours. The two hours that I would devote to working on it if I were able to. I’d just sit there, reflecting on my anxiety around working and often journaling about it.

Eventually, I was able to start working, a little bit at a time. If I wrote half a page, or even a single paragraph, I’d be happy and call it a day.

Until I eventually became able to just show up at the coffee shop and do what I could that day.

I still stumbled, often, but I would also pick up momentum as I succeeded more and more consecutive days.

That’s the slow, daily magic.

No quick fixes, short-cuts, or breathwork exercises guaranteed to reduce anxiety.

Just making room for life as it is, one day at a time.

*There’s far too much to say about whiteness, wealth, colonialism, and modern U.S. American mainstream spirituality to fit in this post. Stay tuned.

Photo by Tyler Lastovich on Unsplash