Spiritual growth almost never feels like growth while it's happening. The 14th-century Sufi poet Rumi described the soul's development not as an ascent but as a kind of hollowing out — a reed cut from its bed, made into an instrument precisely by being emptied. The discomfort you're feeling right now, the sense that something is being stripped away rather than added, may be the process itself, not an obstacle to it. Today, instead of trying to acquire a new insight or practice, consider what you might stop filling yourself with — the noise, the certainty, the busyness — and see what sound comes through.

What are you currently rushing past in your inner life that you'd have to stop and face if you slowed down?

Drawing from Sufi Mysticism — Jalal ad-Din Rumi