It does not last from day to day. 

One cannot put one's spiritual "centeredness" in the freezer and keep it.  One does not "get it" and then, by virtue of once having had it, keep it.

One must regain it every day through practice.  If one does not practice one's discipline one is left with trying to remember what the state was like, what the condition of being oriented to God was about, with going through the motions as the motions are remembered.  One is left tying to remember how it is that one acts with simplicity, harmony, equality, integrity and community--rather than merely acting that way because one is in the right space.  This is very dangerous, and very foolish.  It also gives the practice a bad name because, as one attempts to be the form without the content, failing and falling far short, then those who observe the person as an exemplar of the practice get the wrong idea of the fruit of the practice.

To publish falseness about the truth is as bad as trying "to hide what they don't know, to begin with."  It's a kind of blasphemy--it is misleading people into bad practice which is the same as saying leading them away from good practice.  It is presenting a false notion what the truth is.

It is, perhaps, what was up with the manna in the wilderness.   God said that the children couldn't store it away, that they had to get it fresh from the source each and every day.  They didn't believe God (and how much trouble have we gotten into, over the years, because we didn't?) and they ended up with stale and useless stuff.

One must practice--pray, meditate, worship, study, write, serve others, live in the life of the community--each day.  If one doesn't then one ends up, as the early Quakers put it, living in empty forms.

7:08:17 AM