Spiritual practice - a factory reset

TL;DR: Every so often, at least once a year, do a 100 hours of practice as if for the very first time. Then assess. C.f.:  Spirituality for Children

Often, self-driven or self-directed activities lose their original focus, motivation, and enthusiasm. This is especially true for spiritual practitioners who join an organisation and find they have become comfortable only in certain groups and activities within the organisation. Even if they stay out of the sadly inevitable groupism, they have difficulty taking the extreme solution of going solitary and meeting people as if for the first time. Emotional memory along with hurts and guilt at hurting others slowly starts to build up and joy in the practice often diminishes.

The foundation of the inward journey is lack of memory, especially emotional memory. This allows the internal non-physical organs to function at maximum efficiency. Put differently, without expectations to compare against. Chariji used to quote this phrase from the Gita: āścaryavat paśyati. Like a wide-eyed infant who is wonderstruck and joyously gurgles at everything. Joy is a beautiful characteristic of a bhakti margi.

Every so often, every six months or every year, it is helpful to go back to the basics, the introductory literature or videos. You then remember why you started and what led you to this particular path. You can also check - am I doing the practice correctly? Or has it morphed away from the instructions? Is what I am seeing or hearing or thinking or otherwise experiencing matching what generally happens? Or is it completely different?

In many contexts, a reboot is done. Essentially this is what you do to reset a machine when it behaves improperly - slowly or incorrectly. A factory reboot or reset is done when you want to dump everything and set up a machine the way it was manufactured. All personal and custom data are removed.

Here we reboot or reset ourselves. A partial or full reboot of some sort is an ancient technique used generally to drop the ego. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is said to have thrown away one of his intellectual works. Shams is reported to have either dumped Rumi's books in water or asked him to throw them in the water.

Chewing the cud of one's own experiences or knowledge of the experiences of others or the theories and explanations based on experiences are useless. A spiritual life is inherently memoryless. It's like riding a vehicle without a reverse gear or even a brake. Your experience can keep changing moment by moment.

Now, how to go about this reset?

Do a 100 hours of practice as if for the first time, as in Spirituality for Children.

(Heartfulness practitioners may skip the introductory or Masterclasses step, though it won't hurt, and you will appreciate them more with your increased sensitivity from years of practice, even irregular or wrong practice.)