First, without bragging let me just describe my life. I teach five to eight yoga classes and week then add four to five indoor cycle sessions on top of that, fill in to sub in both disciplines, have private sessions with clients as well as oversee several instructors as their direct supervisor. Oh, and, of course, there are all those extra projects that come along and fill my days. This is all interesting but the days get filled and time slips away. Basically, my life is busy. Granted I work in a really uplifting profession but even when one does what one loves things can be intense and exhausting especially when too much ends up on my mat or on the spin cycle.
What to do?
I could just do more in an attempt to take care of things. Work differently, find a better schedule, delegate, try and take time off, plan a vacation (that’s real work) and so on…but all this becomes more stuff to do in the end.
I know in those moments it becomes apparent that it’s time to meditate. The ultimate act of some non-doing! That's right, not more doing, but more nothing just to be and be still without worrying about results or what it will get me. When I meditate, I allow myself to exhale in a whole state of being sort of way then let the world dance by in all its seeming importance until at some point the chatter, urgency and importance of it all drops away allowing a quiet to emerge. There in that place beyond the ripples of life the truth exists and what really matters rises to the surface and reveals itself.
There from that place of quiet contemplation I see the relative nature of my acts. Even when I am attending to great matters and taking care things that must be completed if I am to live a life without complication, still these too become secondary to what I find in meditation.
This is the real path anyway. It’s not the action, the teaching, all the doing rather this is the arrow that points to the reality of a deeper experience. Sitting, resting, and all the manifestations of meditation become the real goal of work, yoga and any other act.
Strangely enough when I grant myself these moments, I receive what is needed to move forward. Sure things may still seem stressful and the day can be filled with obstacles and struggles but when I touch that inner serenity there possibility emerges beyond the immediate occurrences. This creates a ground from which to move onward. From this, things evolve, tasks get completed, the necessary finds its completion and the fringe falls away.
Most of all though, it’s not the result of the mediation that matters, this would make it another task to complete if this is the case. It’s simply to go to where I am truly who I am, the place without masks, definitions and identities and to rest in that. This is the realm of true Knowledge, the knowing that matters. Just that!
As an ancient text declares in all it’s directness.
By Constant Meditation (comparable to the rubbing of the fire-wood) is kindled the flame of Knowledge, which completely burns up the fuel of ignorance. V42 Atmabhodha
May we all unplug in our days and find this.
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