As I started the process of organizing my thoughts, my notes and my stories to write this blog, something became abundantly clear: My practice is a path, it has a particular progression to it.

I suppose, on some level, I always understood that practice wasn’t just a random series of flashes from the darkness. But, it wasn’t until I started to really outline the first chapters of this blog that I saw that new stories built on old stories, new skills and tools built off the ability to use old ones. Crazy… it’s like cause and effect are real and they are playing out in my Dharma practice!! It was this insight, that practice builds on itself, that dove me to create the blog you are reading now — a more-or-less linear series of entries that capture the progression of my practice, that paint an ongoing story about what it means for me to walk this path.

This insight about the linear-ish nature of my practice was also a real confidence booster for me:  For years I fretted over what would happen if my practice “went off the rails”, If Mae Yo wasn’t there anymore to guide me, if I got so lost I couldn’t see my way out (see the blog Mae Yo Q and A). Mae Yo told me I had to be self reliant, that I already was self reliant, that I just needed to keep relying on myself the same way I had up to this point in my practice. I smiled and nodded at her wisdom and then silently kept panicking.

But with this blog, the evidence was laid out plain to see — I had in fact slowly and steadily built up understanding, used old conclusions as scaffolding for what came later.  Shortly after I started this blog I was speaking with Mae Yo and she told me I had all that I needed already in order to figure out how to get myself free. Finally, I believed her. For better or worse, no one can free me but myself…here’s to self reliance.