1) when trying to assess the quality of my efforts I think several factors are at play and I use those to determine the rating of my practice. First is attention to my practice. Was I aware of my intentions and surroundings or I did I not think at all about my practice and was reminded by chance to perform it, or somewhere in between. Next is the energy and that I put into it and the level of priority. Did I perform 7 other mundane tasks before getting to the exercise or did I set out first to do it. Lastly organization is the the other criteria which I base my score on. Did I schedule this into my daily life or did it just happen on its own haphazardly.

2) there have been times that I was successful at my practice but I gave myself a 6/10 due to low energy and priority level, and other times that I was not successful but made significant efforts and I just fell short and I would score myself 4,5/10.

In the end it’s a subjective scoring and one should consider a baseline of success and failure and modify ones score based on those criteria.

I feel that to be somewhat successful, or to be on the right track working in the right direction, I need to have a certain amount of “presence” or mindfulness on the practice I am working on and on the Source in particular.

This inner connectedness then can be for the form and not be heartfelt or heart-seeking or it can be a brief moment and a committed inner state to the day ahead of me or in course. I feel if it is evening, it is already pretty much too late, unless I still have an activity involving other people in the evening.

So the “quality” of my practice first of all depends on that presence of mind and heart even if it is only once and brief. If it is more often and heartfelt that is better too. But if my heart and mind do not connect, then whatever practice will follow or is in course will be of poor quality. An exception, however, is if an event takes place that jolts me into an emotional state is followed by reflection, and even if it is tortuous and not straight away in line with Divine ethical principles, then it can still be successful.

An example:

During a period when I was trying to put myself in the shoes of someone else, even just once a day, something big happened to me. (At least it was big in the emotional impact and certain long-lasting consequences).

It was the end of the day and I had completely forgotten about my practice. Or almost forgotten about it. It is not that clear for me any more, I might have been playing with the thought in my mind not understanding how to apply it or understand it.

I was very very tired and at the end of my rope. I felt humiliated and exhausted and unlucky and generally out of sorts with everything in my life. As a teacher at a school with a very difficult student body of underprivileged children and families with many social and economic problems, I had spent the day trying to survive hour after hour of battle in the class room, in the hallways etc. Being able to teach in itself for only a couple of minutes being a miracle. In this turmoil, I had forgotten to ask the pupils to put the chairs on the tables so the cleaning crew could do their job. I had forgotten all week and basically ever since I arrived at the job three weeks prior. I was considering putting the 28 chairs up myself, and thought about the practice of putting myself in the other person’s shoes. But I much stronger thought entered my mind:

If I am supposed to put myself in the other person’s shoes, shouldn’t the cleaning lady put herself in MY shoes? With this unhappy thought in mind and being at the brink of tears from nervous exhaustion, the cleaning lady appeared at the door and quite literally spoke to me as if from a position of authority. she told me she could not do her job because I was not having the students put the chairs on the tables, and why were there little pieces of paper on the floor, and how could I let students behave like that and basically she was calling into question my skill as a teacher. She was giving me advice on how to teach and I almost broke out in tears. I am experienced teacher, I am a gifted teacher, I should be rewarded and getting great positions and here I am being spoken down to by a cleaning lady. I closed the door and put all the chairs on the tables and picked up all the pieces of paper on the floor like a punished child.

Later, I spoke to a colleague about this and the whole thing snowballed into a much bigger thing about rivalry and envy at work but also about competence etc. I felt I was on that scary path again to a poisonous work environment. Something I just couldn’t handle. And had no resources left in me to deal with.

I can’t remember when I realized my mistake. I think I spoke to the Source immediately as I was putting the chairs on the table, but I felt no warmth or support or encouragement. But I did connect in form. Here, I think this was invaluable.

Everything blew away later and I was able to set up relations with various people according to my own standards.

I am still somewhat scared of what may still happen and how long I can hold out on this dry spell, but I know that it is all a scenario for me to become stronger and all He is asking me is to rely on Him and try and put His lessons into practice.

This was one big lesson, and later I found confirmation: one must always put oneself in the other’s shoes and not worry about anything except God’s satisfaction. Our ability to help others even just a little, is what is important, not my own feeling of being given a much harder job and not even being paid much more than the cleaning lady…

There are so many thoughts that can pop up that are perfectly reasonable and that can justify unethical behavior. Or disregard of oue’s practice.

To conclude, this long post, I’d say, that THE criteria above all others is the connection. To maintain as long and as often as possible. If this is the case and the practice was carried out it deserves a high mark.

First of all I try to analyze my intention. I also try to analyze my effort ,for example did I try hard or did I just want to do something to tick success at the end of the day. Sometimes I am very strict with myself and I choose fail instead of pass because I am not satisfied with the feelings I have.I mean I cannot feel good about my practice.

For example my practice was not to ask for anything in my prayers once a day.So most of the days I prayed three times a day and in two of them I asked for everything and just in one of them I tried not to ask for anything.In this case although I ticked pass but I did not give myself more than 6 or 5.

Selecting practical exercises that are:
A) Objective (vs. Subjective)
B) Clearly Measurable
C) Progressive over time (once a day then twice, ect and expect that you might go up but then come back down; ups and downs are normal; the key is to never give-up)
D) Reasonable (can’t change yourself over-night, can’t change your environment, and others at all unless divine interaction or a miracle takes place (which happens all the time)
E) challenging (but doable)
are the initial steps in selecting an in-vivo exercise.

Now that you are ready to do the practical work, then beg for HIS help (every second, minute, hour, and day):
1. Because without HIS help you will not carry it out
2. The level of your plea for HIS help determines your success or failure
3. Be Passionate about the practical work & Be Passionate with HIM.

I assessed the rating of my practice based on the time and effort I put into my daily practices. I found that focus and concentration during my practice were difficult. Though I would often succeed it would require that I make multiple attempts.

As I progressed I discovered that listening to spiritual music during my practice helped me concentrate and focus. Like iron fillings being pulled towards a magnet.

I completed the module “Toward an in vivo practice”. My criteria to rate the quality of my practice were as follows by the end of the cycle. I should note that initially, I did not think of item 2 and item 4 didn’t become apparent until a ways into the cycle, when I figured out that cowardice may have had to do with some of my failings.

1. Whether the situation presented itself to practice my exercise. In many instances, it did not.
2. What I could have done, starting at the level of my intention, to allow situations to arise on a daily basis for me.
3. Whether I pre-primed myself before the situation arose so that I could get a “jump” on my imperious self. E.g. In order to combat my outburst of anger in a very specific situation – while driving, riding or walking in the street and in response to other motorists – I would make a mental check-in before getting in my car, on my bike or stepping outside.
4. Whether when the situation presented itself, I acted fearfully (with cowardice) when faced with the very imbalanced character trait I was trying to correct or if I plowed forward courageously, with faith in the fact that this would ultimately be an educational experience in spite of my fear of failing, getting an unpleasant response from my interlocutor/counterpart, etc.

What I know for certain now is that it pays off to be systematic, as in trying to link outcome B to action A on my part in a specific situation on a given day. This was predicated on having the motivation to review the day’s work before bed and doing so carefully, trying to keep my emotional responses at bay as I relived the situation I had experienced earlier in the day. Emotions clouded my judgement and were a hindrance in achieving some modicum of objectivity.

I love the fact that we can mark ourselves on quality of our practice! this is an important thing for me and helps me practice with more sincerity!!

Quality is subjective, it is a matter of personal opinion and what constitutes an acceptable level of quality will vary from one individual to another
Not all aspects of our ethical and spiritual practice are tangible as well the degree of attention or effort or intention or involvement can’t be measure through indicators,becuz Quality is always evolving, it is very difficult for me to rate the quality of my practice by grading !

1. My ‘quality of practice’ assessment criteria ?
a) using my conscience with regard to my intention
b) trying to be objective
despite these two criteria the assessment was not as good as I wished it because I did not allow enough time for proper assessment.

2. For strengthening my will I chose to do yoga exercises for a min. of 5 minutes, the assessment criteria worked Ok and proved to be determining but another exercise on my thoughts and behaviour was subjective and insufficient.

When trying to assess the quality of my practice I use different assessment factors for each exercise.

I noticed that the way you can rate your success is very different from one exercise to another. So I suggest each exercise should have its own rating system. Like, for example, if I have to exercise 1 hour every day, then I should rate if I prioritized, if I remembered I was doing it for God and not to become more fit and so on… but all those criteria do not apply to another exercise about anger.

In that case, I cannot prioritize because I need to act only when something makes me angry. On the other hand, to remember I am doing it for God it is the only way to succeed, so I cannot rate that because it should happen by default. So this shows rating criteria that are good for one exercise are wrong for another.

Considering this, I decided that it was better to incorporate in each exercise its rating system.

When I write my exercise I also write the rating system I will use for it.

For example, this is my exercise on anger: I will not get angry and I will stop my anger when I feel it is coming out, before anyone can see it. If I fail on every occasion, I will get zero. If I succeeded on at least half of the occasions I had to get angry, then I will get 5 and then from 5 upwards, accordingly to how many times I succeeded.

But I am only taking the points if I write down the occasion I had to fail or succeed.

Like, for instance, today I did not get angry in traffic, but I did with that lady that jumped in front of me in the queue at the supermarket and so on… If I don’t write down the occasions I had to practice, I get zero points. This is very helpful because It gives me the tool of statistics. At the end of the week, I know if I get more angry in traffic or with the kids or at the office…so I can focus more on those occasions during the next week.

For every exercise, I also introduce ‘the backup exercise’

What if I did not have any chance to get angry during the day? Then, in order to get 5, I need to read a word on anger from my spiritual books.
The ‘backup exercise’ must be something I can do at the very last minute of the day, before I assess my practice.

I noticed the ‘backup exercise’ works for every exercise, so I always incorporate it. For example, in case I had to exercise for an hour a day, if I did not have time to do it and I am really tired at the end of the day, I can get 5 points if I do 10 minutes of prayer.

This is a good way to trick my imperious self because, at the end of the day, even if you failed you are still doing something good for your progress.

But it can also be tricky because you might be tempted to say: I have no time for that, so I will do the backup exercise later tonight. In order to avoid that, I introduced the rule that, for the voluntary exercises, the ‘backup’ cannot be done for more than 3 days in a row.

Voluntary means an exercise on something that you have to voluntary make as opposed to an occasional exercise, that you might or might not have the occasion to do.

On the contrary, in the case of occasional exercises, I noticed it is a good sign to have many following days with the ‘backup exercise’ because it means occasions to practice were less and less, so maybe you worked enough on that and you are not anymore a person that gets angry easily. But this is different from one exercise to another, so to sum up, I think:
– Each exercise should have its own rating system

– Each exercise should incorporate a way to produce statistics on the practice, that can be used to improve the practice in the following days

– Each exercise should have its own ‘backup exercise’ (which, in turn, should have its own rating rules)

One thing I never included in the rating is my intention, because do not think it is possible to be objective about it and also it is not very useful for the improvement of my practice to rate it.

In general, the rating criteria choice should be based on what allows us to improve, because this is the point.

Very useful. Thank you

I noticed that I liked the question/answers with regards to in vivo practice as well as Connecting with the Divine. These were very helpful and I wish there was nice way to make them into a short PDF file for printing. However, I like the idea of pen and paper rather than the computer for assessing myself. With the computer, one can do much better mathematical analysis over the years, plot charts and perhaps do a probabilistic estimate of the trends. This may not sound good, but somehow I see the computer so much in a day that I want a break and love books and paper instead. I am not that old yet, but I guess the younger generation will assess themselves digitally. This said, I think the site is very useful in shaping the traditional pen and paper method as well (which I need to keep working at).