Seasons of Dryness

So, it's been since May that this spiritual dry period began, and it still continues. I can't even believe I'm using the word "spiritual". I still can't commit to asserting that I actually have a contemplative practice.

I haven't found a way out of the dryness. Sometimes I become lazy because nothing is happening.

I don't know how to describe it; it's not as if I expected anything to happen. If I could find words, I would say it was a bit like living in a state of grace when I prayed. I felt connection to G-d, felt G-d's presence. The shield of Abraham was a reality, 24/7.

Not that I don't feel G-d's presence now. It's just different. I don't know... was I in a state of bliss before? I don't think so. But it felt like an elevated state. Now, it is no less an extraordinary state because it doesn't feel ordinary, just indescribable...unexpected...unknown. Unformed.

I distressed over my lack of practice and connection for months even though both occur, unevenly, in fits and starts. It's been a hard year, very hard, but I hung in there. That is different; even though G-d was slaying me I remained faithful so maybe that's something. After all, I chose this covenant.

Last month in prayer, feeling the connective lack, I suddenly realised that there was more to my life than prayer. There was still ritual. There were the mitzvot, large and small, unannounced, throughout my days...and suddenly I grasped the big picture, felt a little more connected. I'd become so focused on what wasn't going right that I lost sight of the whole, and what was going right in the midst of my distress.

I can't tell if I am being too hard on myself. I have no idea if I am on a path or not. I don't know if I am just dumb or slow or missing the point or everything is as it should be. I just don't recognise this experience as anything but frustrating and yet, I have no true idea of what is.

Limning that question are unexpected moments of ultimate compassion for creatures and events, an absence of judgment, as if seeing through G-d's eyes. Another fringe of moments when the world is alive with personality, a tree, a flower, even a cloud...transformed. There are moments where everything shifts and I see and experience differently...moments of G-d, just not in the way I am used to.

And the miracles continue, of healing, of things getting better or, once in a while, of going my way (diamond rare), of the inflow and outflow of kindnesses and friendship...of seeing miracles for others as well.

This all must create something, must weave some wondrous cloth I am too blind to really see.

I feel guilty.

I feel like I'm doing something wrong

Approaching prayer is just boring. And I feel guilty for that as well

I don't know what to do.

My inner life sucks.

...Doesn't it?