Lately I’ve been so focused on my diet, that I’ve neglected other parts of the path. I suppose I figured they would “fall into place,” but the didn’t. Yesterday is a great example of this failure on my part. My diet was foremost in my mind, but I neglected my morning meditation. After that several other mistakes happened that led to a horrible day.

Skipping my morning meditation should not be easily excused. I excused it yesterday as I was “busy.” I was helping my kids get ready for the Saturday morning, and having gotten up late myself I pushed off my morning meditation.

Next up, I went to my mother’s house to help her with a project. On the way over, instead of tuning into silence, I ignored that injunction and instead tuned into my own ego thoughts about my life and day.

By the time I got to my mother’s place, I wasn’t too thrilled. I was more filled with my own ego. So I cast my displeasure of her various mistakes and made it known I wasn’t happy being there. A thought in the back of my mind said, “you’ll miss these days when she’s gone, enjoy them while they last,” but I pushed it out so that I could fulfill my ego’s frustration.

After I left her place, I came back home, again filled with my ego thoughts. This led to various judgements against my wife and kids. I judged my wife for letting some of her college classes slip to the last moment. There must have been a better way to handle this… whatever it was, I didn’t utilize it. Instead I was a jerk, pointing out her mistakes with college.

By the afternoon, my ego had primed me to focus on myself so much that I really didn’t have much interest in anything else.

By evening I mistook my ego for righteousness and when my spouse made a mistake, I judged her for it. An hour later I found myself making the same mistake (getting angry).

The whole of the problem was that I put all the importance on my conscious diet, but lacked the other spiritual qualities to back it up – to give it a foundation to stand upon. So while I avoided meat, and ate healthy, I fell to the pitfalls of ego, which led to the disturbances of selfishness and anger.