My own first year of regular intensive spiritual practice was not very pleasurable at all- I was driving myself mad!- mainly a year of bitter herbs (Good God!) with a few wild transcendental experiences- probably thrown in to keep me going. When I first started, I would meditate in the fiction and reference sections of the Lake Geneva Public Library, opening my eyes and finding that only 2 minutes of 20 had gone by, the Clan of the Cave Bear books seeming to laugh at my meditative misfortunes from their lofty perch. I know what kept me going, but at the same time, I really don't know why I kept on with it! I am glad that I kept going, because just over the horizon meditation was about to become much more effective and the crazy perseverance and focus demanded by asceticism would find a wonderful balancing channel in effortless meditation. We are all tested repeatedly on the evolutionary path. Even the easiest path of joy will have some challenge and difficulty- though far less than the strain of clinging to a woefully small self identity! We rarely know our true scope until we put our whole being into something. That totality of focus is a process of death and Life, so that emerging from the eye of the needle, we find our real nature to be without end. Is there a spark in your soul that wants to become a wild fire? Are there ancient stirrings longing to get out? If not you, who? If not now, when?