Day Six, In Which Nothing Remarkable Happened

 Is this exploration a failure if for two days, I had nothing to report?

What constitutes success or failure in this endeavor? I know I discussed it in the first post but I find myself thinking on it more now.

I had said that success would be found if I did practice covering for the thirty days and discovered that I either was... or was not... comfortable with doing it regularly. - Because I feel like I've been in limbo on the topic for quite some time now: whether it was for me.

Initially, I felt more spiritual and more prone to prayer with this sort of vibration of excitement attached to it. Six days in and it is beginning to feel a little more like part of my identity and less like a novelty. I suspect that is part of the exploration though, a shift in consciousness about the practice itself.

A few years ago, I did something similar with nidra yoga for a class (the blog from that is attached to this account if you want to check it out) and I recall how it felt like such a novelty at first... and then it felt like it had become a part of my life... and then, when the journaling was over, I could acknowledge that it was an interesting experience and that I liked having the knowledge about it but that it wasn't necessarily for me.

Currently, when I think on this new exploration, I can see myself continuing it for months or years to come. I have other things that are in flux now - what it means to be modest, a desire to shift toward natural fiber clothing, to be more in tune with my meditation, and to pick up yoga once more- and I find myself thinking about how covering will play into all of that as well.

Do I think I have experienced a profound change in the last week or so? No, I don't. Do I feel good for picking up this mitzvah? Yes, I do. But has the immediate "the cover means I also do this other thing" faded? Also yes. And quickly. Or maybe feeling like it was acting like an activation switch (see previous post) was because at that moment, I was more rested and now I'm more tired. I feel like I do have a tendency to better adhere to my own spiritual tendencies when I am rested and fed and I am very bad at resting and eating as the week takes off.

I wanted to take this on as a mind-body exploration, a spiritual endeavor, and I feel like a lot of what I end up writing about is how I felt in the moment, specifically how I related to my spiritual identity which I guess could fall into the right category. How does Jewishness connect and affect your mind and body? How it feels to be outwardly Jewish in a non-Jewish setting? How being accepted as outwardly Jewish in a non-Jewish setting affects your relationship to your spirituality? 

There are so many realms worth looking at in this one simple exploration. Did I pray this morning? No. Did I kiss the mezuzah? Yes. Did I think for the hour drive to campus on what it means to be an observant Jew and how that affects the different areas of my life? Yes. Did I pray over my food? Some of it. Was I abundantly aware of the fact that I am somehow intrinsically different than the other people around me? Pretty much the whole time. 

But I think my mind is wandering at this point. Very sleepy. Tomorrow is a new day with new thoughts to have.