Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich, and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life. Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye.

When you think about it, our life generally unfolds in somewhat predictable phases.

When we outgrow our childhood fascination

with cartoon characters, for example,

we put those toys away, develop a teenage crush

on some Hollywood star or singer, hang posters of them all over our adolescent

bedroom walls only to replace them with something new a few years later.

As we age, we shift our focus to academia or a career, raising a family, pursuing

the arts, always maturing in stages.

Our spiritual path, however, is a little less predictable.

We either deepen our existing connection to the traditions with which we were raised, or we do a

complete 180 and explore beliefs and values that more closely resonate with us as we grow older.

We take one step, evaluate, take another step, evaluate again, and so on.

With absolutely no idea where the path will lead, our spiritual

journey is different from a trip to the grocery store where the destination is

clear. It's more like reading a novel where each chapter blends into the next but in a book that never ends.

As I had mentioned in the episode called Relaps, we don't spiritually grow in a linear fashion. We often make mistakes along the way,

fall down, get up, and try again. My own personal journey has focused on transitioning

from being rigid to being gentle.

And after all these years, I just realized that I've been going about it all wrong.

I've been regularly scanning my thoughts, words and actions for signs of rigidity, and then polishing down those rough edges

in an effort to smooth them out.

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