S1E6: The First (Easy) Step to Living A More Spiritual Life

Have you ever struggled to maintain a consistent spiritual practice amid life's constant distractions and seeming demands? Creating space for authentic connection with God doesn't require hours of meditation or elaborate rituals—it simply needs our heartfelt desire and commitment.

We live in a world where everything competes for our attention. Responsibilities, relationships, work, entertainment—all pull us in different directions, making it challenging to prioritize our spiritual wellbeing. Yet the foundation of living spiritually begins with carving out intentional moments to nurture our relationship with the divine. This episode explores how to create a sustainable daily practice that invites God's presence into our daily lives.

The secret lies in starting small. Whether it's one minute or ten, choosing a specific time each day creates a sacred appointment with God that gradually transforms our spiritual awareness. Like "plugging into source"—connecting to the infinite energy that sustains all life—these daily touch points cultivate a deeper relationship with both ourselves and the divine. Through consistent practice, we develop discernment, learning to recognize God's guidance amid the noise of our own thoughts and external influences.

Your practice should evolve with you—flexible yet consistent, disciplined yet grace-filled. My own spiritual routine has transformed dramatically since I began in 2001, adapting to different seasons while maintaining its essential purpose. 

The key questions remain: When will you practice? For how long? What form will your practice take? How will you remember to do this? 

By answering these questions with honesty and creating systems of accountability, you establish the foundation for spiritual growth that extends far beyond scheduled practice times into a life lived in conscious communion with God.  How can it get any better?  

Check out Sarah Ban Breathnach's book, Simple Abundance, here.

Music by Song Channel Music.  Listen at SongChannelMusic.com

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Transcript

Introduction to Daily Practice

Speaker 1 0:05

Hi and thanks for joining me on Welcoming God. Hey everyone, sarah Hinkle, here Today in Welcoming God, we are going to talk about creating a personal daily practice. I know at the end of the last episode I asked when will you sit and inquire about the questions that I was posing regarding love, god's love, your relationship with God's love and yourself, and how this transforms your relationship with self, with others, with life itself, and the impact that knowing God already loves us can have on how we love ourselves, how we love God, how we love others and life itself. Love God, how we love others and life itself. Being able to commit to time with ourselves, to cultivate a relationship with ourselves, a loving relationship with ourselves, a respectful, kind, caring relationship with ourselves, like God loves us and is trying to love and care for us. That requires some commitment and it also requires some discipline. So we're going to talk about how to do that today because it is so vastly important. Everything in life is trying to get our attention. We're also trying to get others' attention. It's just a part of life. I've discovered. Everything wants attention and that can make things difficult to commit to the things that are truly important to us and to cultivating our relationship with God, with a source greater than ourselves.

Speaker 1 2:09

So I want to talk today about how to create some kind of beginning daily practice. So how do you commit to yourself when everything else is grabbing for your attention and you have responsibilities? Some of you might have kids, you might have someone that you're taking care of at home who's not well, or aging parents, career I mean any number of things. You might have your own health stuff going on or your own things that need a lot of attention. Of course we all do so. How do we actually carve out and take just a few moments every day at a similar time of the day, if we can? I think it's a great way to start by picking a time of day that you know. Okay, I can take this much time reasonably for myself. Is it one minute? Is it three minutes? Is it five minutes? Is it 10 minutes? Whatever amount of time feels manageable, because the first thing about creating a commitment to self and to God, even to others, is to make it manageable. I can actually do this. I can do one minute a day. I can take one minute If I have family around me or whatever. I can just say look, I'm taking one minute for myself. Do not interrupt me unless it's an emergency. You go into a room or at the cafe, or on a bus, going to work or a train. You can take one minute for yourself, unplug from everything else and plug.

Plugging into Source Energy

Speaker 1 4:00

Plugging into source I remember reading Sarah Ben-Bretnach's Simple Abundance Journal of Daily Meditations. This was probably 15 or 16 years ago and it literally totally changed and transformed my life and it was so beautiful the things that she encouraged us to do in this daily meditation book every day. And I remember one of the essays that she wrote was about how it's like. God is like a light switch or source. I can't remember exactly now, I'm paraphrasing big time, but I interpreted it as source, the source of life being connected. It's like a light switch. We can turn it on, we can turn it off, but let's turn it on, let's keep that connection on all the time. And then this idea, this phrase came to me plug into source, like an electric plug that you plug into the wall to get connected to electricity. Let's plug into source and get that energy from God.

Speaker 1 5:35

I work with a great Ayurvedist and she has encouraged me to really explore my own needs around energy, how much energy I have, where I get my energy from, and to really realize that my true energy is coming from God. That's where it's coming from, the source of all of life. So when I can plug into this source, it's endless. Now it doesn't mean that I'm supposed to be going, going, going all day, every day, and pushing and all of that. It just means that this energy, god, is supporting me at every moment of the day. Even if there are things that are happening that are horrible or that I don't want or that I'm not happy about or I'm scared of or whatever, god is still there. God is with me. Again, it doesn't take away the bad stuff. That's a challenging part of reality in human life. That God being with us doesn't always mean that we're not going to suffer, and that is a hard thing to accept. But knowing that this source, this benevolent source and guide, is always with me gives me comfort and joy.

Discernment and Divine Guidance

Speaker 1 6:59

So I love the idea of plugging into source and whether it can just be for a minute a day, five minutes, 10 minutes, whatever you can reasonably do, because we want to make this easy to achieve, because when you can achieve the first steps of your personal practice and committing to it, you will be able to add more over time, as time opens up, as you realize. Oh, I really need to start doing this every day. I really need to engage in a meditation or centering prayer every day for this much time. I actually would like to add on another daily practice at the end of the day. I already do my practice at the beginning of the day, so I'm going to add it now to the end of the day too, in addition to the beginning, because that's what the call in my heart is. I'm called in my heart to do this practice more often, and I'd like to add it at the end of the day, or maybe in the middle of the day or before dinner.

Speaker 1 8:07

That is how God starts to speak to us and I feel called to say you know, sometimes I'm afraid that people will think, oh well, what is God's call? And they think anything is God's call. Well, that's not true. There's lots of different things. Again, trying to get our attention.

Creating Accountability and Reminders

Speaker 1 8:27

This means that we have to start bringing in and asking God for the tool, the gift, the skill of discernment, and you can ask for that every day. God, please give me the gift of discernment, to discern, to hear, to know, understand your true voice, aside from all the other things I'm hearing inside myself. So when we can start discerning the voice of God within us, that guidance, that true guidance from the one true source of it, all of life, then we know, oh, I truly am feeling this call on my heart to do this, and I know God is asking us to do things that are beneficial. This guidance won't ask you to harm yourself or harm others. It's not going to do that. So it's just up to us us to start creating this space for God to come into our lives consciously, to consciously connect and cultivate this relationship with ourselves and God, so that we can build this loving, caring connection that is consistent, caring connection that is consistent, and we can start to see the benefits, reap the benefits and rewards of this consistent commitment, of our daily practice to connect with God. And this is just a simple way to start living a more spiritual life.

Speaker 1 10:18

And you might be thinking, oh my God, this is ridiculous. This is so easy. It is. It actually is easy, and there are ways that you can remind yourself throughout the day to tap back into source, to connect back in with God, and that all comes from yourself, you know, as your human being, in this body, the body that you have, the soul that you are. That is where God is speaking to us, through this body, this human right now. And I'm also getting messages outside of myself, you know, sometimes I might see a billboard or I might hear something on the TV, or watch something or read something that just speaks to me. Oh my God, yes, that was for me, that's for me right now. So God is speaking to us in all kinds of ways.

Speaker 1 11:15

Create and cultivate this daily practice, some kind of practice that we're committing to. How will this support us to live a more connected life, spiritual life with God all the time, and what are the benefits of that? So those are some inquiries for you to take away from this conversation and inquire about on your own. And again, when will you do that? So a lot, a big part of this, a lot of this, is about accountability and it requires some discipline. You know, if you can go get your coffee every morning and you're disciplined with that, how can you start a daily practice to tap into source within your own self every day? If you can religiously watch your favorite TV show at night.

Speaker 1 12:17

How will you create that nightly practice, before you go to bed, just taking a few moments to consciously, intentionally connect within yourself with God? You know we have to make it simple like that. You know I've got these other things I commit to, so how will I hold myself accountable to this? How will I remember to do it? That's a big part of accountability. How will we remember to do it? So what are some tools that you can use to remind yourself? Are you a sticky note person? Do you need to put a sticky note at your bedside or on the bathroom mirror, or on the dashboard of your car, on the door walking out of your house, your home, your apartment, wherever you live? What do we need to remind ourselves? Do you have a cell phone? Can you make a reminder that is a daily reminder that shows up every day at the same time and that says connect with God.

Flexible Practice and Personal Commitment

Speaker 1 13:23

Do my daily practice. Whatever words work for you to remember, pray for three minutes, meditate with God for three minutes, whatever you need to remember to connect in with God on a daily, regular basis. And then discipline comes in. You know, I don't always want to sit in my daily practice, I just want to get into work, I want to get into my day, and sometimes I'm not feeling well or I'm just really tired and I give myself the grace of listening to myself. If I really just need to rest and doing a physical practice, if that's a part of my daily routine to connect with God and connect with myself in a healthy way, if that's a part of my daily routine to connect with God and connect with myself in a healthy way. If I'm not up for it, I give myself the grace to take a break that day and just take care of myself, whether I need to sleep in or rest or eat right away. Or, you know, maybe I do my meditation sitting on the couch in a comfortable position, as opposed to sitting on my yoga block on the floor, which is comfortable as well, but requires more energy to sit that way.

Speaker 1 14:36

So this is all about discerning what do we need in connection with God? It's not about, oh, I'm just going on my own path here, I'm rebelling, I am not choosing to do this because I don't want to, and hey, that's okay too. If you notice that, that's very real. I deal with that a lot too, like, oh, I really don't want to sit in centering prayer the second time today. I really just want to watch TV and I'll tap into my heart space. I'll even can ask God. Sometimes I'll be like God do you want me to do centering prayer right now, or can I just watch TV and I will get an answer. I'll feel it out within myself. I might hear TV or I might hear centering prayer and I'll do my best to trust that. Sometimes I authentically just feel the joy in my heart to watch something on TV and I'll turn on the TV and I'll watch for a half hour and all of a sudden I get the cue sit with God, go into centering prayer, and it's like, ah, okay, now is the right time for that. So you know, we can be flexible, but the point is to go to God, to come back to God, to cultivate that relationship and that union where we want to be with God. We want to engage because, again, there is going to be so much in life grabbing for our attention.

Speaker 1 16:00

So I have some questions for you when will you do this daily practice? What time of the day? That's the first step. Decide on a time. The second step is for how long? How long will you do this practice and make it reasonable, make it manageable? You know your life, you know what's in it. How much time can you reasonably commit? If you can commit to more time, commit to more time. But if you can't, what's reasonable? A minute, three minutes, five minutes? Can you allow yourself that much time? And if you need to communicate with others, I need this space for this many minutes. And then you can set an alarm on your phone to go off in three minutes, five minutes, one minute, and then you'll know okay, I've done my commitment and I can re-engage back with my family or whoever needs me or whatever. You could even go longer. If you don't have those needs in your life family and people needing you Maybe you turn the alarm off and you want to sit longer.

Speaker 1 17:07

Maybe you turn the alarm off and you want to sit longer. You want to go into maybe a physical practice like yoga or exercise that makes you feel connected with God. Maybe you decide you know what. I'm going to go for a walk today. My daily practice with God is going to be going for a walk and I'm going to walk for at least this many minutes and I'm just going to allow myself to be open to God and enjoy nature and just connect with God in this way.

Speaker 1 17:33

So, time of day, what time of day are you committing to, for how long are you committing to this practice? Right now, what are you doing to connect with God? Is it prayer? Is it meditation, centering prayer, sitting in stillness, some form of physical activity like walking or yoga or exercise? And then how will you remind yourself? How will you remember to do this? Do you set a reminder in your phone at that time of the day, every day, and it'll pop up and then you have to deal with it? You know a daily reminder. Do you set an alarm for yourself that goes off the same time of day every day and that reminds you? Okay, now it's my time to connect with God. Now's my time to cultivate this connection through a daily practice, this connection through a daily practice. Do you write a sticky note for yourself and put it somewhere that you will see when you need to connect with God at that time of the day that you've committed to? So these are simple steps to start cultivating a relationship with God on a daily basis, intentionally. So I look so forward to hearing from you and I want to encourage you.

Setting Manageable Goals and Evolution

Speaker 1 18:58

If you'd like to share with me how this is going for you, you can contact me through the website welcominggodcom, and just scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to the get in touch section. Send me an email and let me know how's it going. What are you committing to? And also, you can start by committing to a certain length of days. Will you commit for the next seven days? Will you commit for the next 21 days? Will you commit for the next 30 days? Maybe you're ready to commit for a whole year. But again, think about making it manageable so that you'll actually do it. It's not going to overwhelm you to the point where you're like I can't keep this up. Make it manageable at first and then, if it needs some fine tuning, if you need to adjust the time of day or the time of time that you're spending or the activity you're doing, keep it flexible, keep it flowing.

Speaker 1 19:57

My personal practice started in around 2001 and it has changed drastically over the years. So I've allowed it to change and flow and evolve. So I look so forward to you doing this, and this is just a simple way to start cultivating a more spiritual life and a conscious, intentional, direct connection with God, inviting God, welcoming God more into your daily life, as opposed to just reserving it for Sundays or when you're praying at mealtime or when something bad happens. You're connecting with God all the time, so enjoy this journey of creating your own daily personal practice connecting with God, and I will see you on the next episode. Thanks for joining me on another episode of Welcoming God. Please subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen and consider leaving us a review, as it helps more people find and benefit from this show. Music by Song Channel Music. You can listen and hear more at songchannelmusiccom. Until we meet again, aloha nui loa, take care and God bless.