The Leisure to Practice

I first became aware of this as a vocation around 1980. I was starting to meet Tibetan Lamas and they were saying this was a desirable state of being to be able to help yourself become more enlightened while you also help everyone else become enlightened too.

So, I began praying for the "Leisure to Practice". To some degree I was already there except my children were then 6 to 9 years old (my older kids) and I had bought land to survive the recession (which took the unemployment rate to about 10% like during the Great Recession) and built myself a house by selling one of our vehicles to buy building materials to build an A-Frame for my wife and chidren and I to live on that we had paid for with cash, (land and building materials). This saved us about 60,000 dollars in rent over the next 5 years time and allowed us then (when they oldest was about 12 to move to the San Francisco Bay area and buy a business by then.

But, my actual Leisure to practice did not come fully until I was 50 and had almost died and was forced to retire. The miracle for me was I was in a financial position where I actually could retire at 50 and be okay ongoing. So, I entered into the Leisure to practice sort of in shock of how God had brought what I had prayed for about by almost killing me in the process.

So, the first 5 years of my "Leisure to Practice" were psychologically hard to adjust to after a life of trying to support my wife and children after leaving college to work full time around 25 to support my new wife and baby to be.

However, I also knew I could help myself and everyone I knew more by having this "Leisure to Practice".

I realized today that this isn't necessarily just a religious or spiritual thing but that anyone who is into helping themselves and all other beings can benefit from this state (and everyone else around them too) by achieving this financial and psychological state of being benevolent to oneself and others.

Often you see people creating non-profits themselves or working for non-profits and volunteers once they reach this state around the world.

In the past people had to become Priests and Nuns or Ministers to achieve this but with university educations and educations from the school of hard knocks often people reach this state at literally any point in their adult lives worldwide.

So, the Leisure to practice more broadly defined would be: "Being freed up to help yourself and all other beings that you choose to without any limits".

For me, personally I would say, "By God's Grace'

But, I realized today even if you don't believe in God or Buddha that you can still be kind to yourself and all other beings you meet in any creative way you can think of and "Change the world" in a good way.