“Homework” vs. adventure and curiosity
September 7, 2022 2 Comments
Is spiritual seeking part “doing my homework” and part an adventure in service of mystical curiosity?
Trying to find a Richard Rose quote where he used the word, “adventure,” it shows up twice in Decision, Determination, and Discrimination notes:
Determination: (Courage)
CONTINUALLY WORK for ways to accelerate your adventure.
Prefer the company of colleagues over pleasant but aimless social contacts.
Work relentlessly, but without drudgery.
And then in a list of mileposts:
- Struggle for the adventure of it, and look for the advantage that may follow every loss.
- You reach the ability for between-ness.
- You continue to work after ambitions have proven ridiculous, even spiritual ambition. FOR ALL TIME YOU ARE THE VECTOR OF YOUR WILL.
So what I hear is the homework drudgery feeling isn’t the best, and that if I can wait, and hear the kind of nerdy academic adventure feeling voice, indulge that maybe, then that is the kind of homework.
I have a feeling that part of a successful spiritual search for me might be hearing and being able to act on these kinds of subtle senses of the right action. There isn’t an English word that differentiates doing homework with courageous determination, adventure, and without drudgery vs. doing homework while feeling heels dug in, resistant to the latest assignments of God who withholds truth until I jump through his invisible hoops. Maybe another part is I need to be willing to do some of the latter while looking for opportunities to transmute it into a more dynamic, more engaging study of the former, exciting kind of “homework.”
Ignoramuses Anonymous 
Have been feeling this way as well. We have to find joy in the work or it will be drudgery which it isn’t supposed to be. The inner child is the key here.
The nameless calling. I hear you. Is it work, yes, but can we deny its joy, no! Even as it confounds us, it compels us forward with a promise of HOME! How to reach the nameless, mysterious goal with no instructions or directions except the path pushed before us by the yearning in our soul. Its work and joy and pain and an adventure. I long for the joy of completion of this journey. Not to have the ecstacy fill me to the point of sobbing one moment and gone the next until it comes again. Half human, whole spirit searching searching for the way home.
I want to live in it completely and always. So, is this the goal? I climb my mountain and take each moment as it comes in complete faith, yes, this IS the path.