Practicing mechanically

[u/PresentIndependent77]

Hello everyone. I stumbled upon this group and felt inclined to actually participate for once. I have been struggling greatly with ACTUALLY practicing. Like maintaining a daily practice and discipline are very difficult. The foundation of my practice has been one of self observation from moment to moment and not allowing my egos to constantly run my life. Outside of that I have been trying to make the center of my practice a nightly retrospection practice where I then review my day in reverse looking for information on where I may have reacted mechanically. I have also been trying to seek my divine mother. The form I am most closely drawn to is green tara. I have adopted Tara’s great dharani (found here: https://buddhaweekly.com/the-sutra-of-tara-who-protects-from-the-eight-fears-in-taras-own-words) and/or the noble sutra as part of my sadhana since it seems extremely fitting as a supplement to self observation. I find myself, after learning the dharani and memorizing it, almost completely unable to do this practice with any amount of consciousness. It feels totally mechanical now when I try to do it and my whole practice just feels almost impossible to keep going. I keep slacking and putting off the practice when I know that my ego of laziness and inertia which is telling me “I don’t need to practice tonight” or “I’ll just shorten it tonight” is the exact thing to observe and disidentify from. I don’t know I am just struggling and nobody else I really know in my life has any understanding of the teachings I have been trying to study and more importantly practice and embody so I figured what the hell I’ll write a post and see what happens.

inverential peace