finding the present moment

You don't need to leave your room.  Remain sitting at your table and listen.  Don't even listen, simply wait.  Don't even wait.  Be quite still and solitary.  The world will feely offer itself to you.  It has no choice.  It will roll in ecstasy at your feet  - Kafka


It's remarkable how - even when you have in mind to be mindful (ha!) - true, clear presence can elude you.  The moment you realize "hey, I'm present!" you're really not present anymore, you know what I mean?    Simple as it sounds, being present to the moment that is, without wishing for it to be any different, without thinking ahead or remembering behind - it's so rare.  Think of times when you've been driving somewhere - say, the grocery store - and it's only as you are reaching your destination that you realize you can't really remember the journey there.  Your mind has been on what you're going to buy for dinner, which might jog the memory of the last time you had that for dinner and the friends that you shared it with... which then makes you think of the time you all went camping together and how fantastic that was... etc, etc.   Yep. 

So now, sitting here in this softly lit room, I listen.   I hear frogs singing through the open windows to the back garden.  I wait.  John Gorka's "The Water is Wide" begins to fill the room.  Now, I will be still.  I will allow the nighttime World to offer itself to me, and I accept it with gratitude. 

downward dog split

Tess snapped this while we were at the park this afternoon. I *love* podcasts, y'all. How amazing it is to be able to take yoga with me wherever I go!

This is one of my favourite poses. My right leg extends higher than my left right now, but that's pretty much fitting with my left hamstring being a bit more flexible (still) than my right. This just feels *good*.


larger

Ong Namo Guru Dev Namo

Starting out, a blank page, it's daunting...  I'm opening this up because so often in the last month I've found myself thinking "I want to write about this" or "I'm so eager to talk to someone about what I'm reading/thinking/experiencing" without really having the right place to do so.  I'm hoping that this will be that place.  I'm hoping that I can reach deeper into myself, learn more and share more about the way that my life is opening up.  Yoga, meditation, healthful eating, healthful thinking, friendships, books and journeys - literal and figurative.

Please, please feel welcome to comment, link me to your own blog and share this in any way you wish.  I would love for there to be dialogue and a coming together of birds of a feather.

Ong Namo Guru Dev Namo

I bow before my highest consciousness.    This mantra I turn to most often in meditation;  it fits like a glove in my breathing, and brings my mind a place to rest.   To describe myself as a novice meditator is being, well, generous.  I've got a good, healthy case of monkey-mind going on but, obviously, this puts me in pretty good company with 95% of the Earth's population.  ;)  My mind flits from one thought to another with incredible speed, taking turns in completely random directions.  I will leap from some obscure (yet very vivid) memory of a morning walk in Alabama to next week's plans to plant something new in the garden.  This makes me normal, I know, but still.... it can be frustrating.  I'm coming to see that this is a really ok part of the process - - to simply witness the monkey-mind is being present.  If only for a few seconds, someone is watching.  Over time, maybe that someone will hang out a bit longer.  Also, Stephen Cope in "The Wisdom of Yoga" makes an interesting point:  the affliction is not the monkey-mind (or puppy-mind, as he calls it), but rather our reactivity to it.

Anyway, here it is - that first entry that can be so dang hard to tap out.  I feel excited about this beginning, and look forward to seeing where it may lead.   Now, my book and my iced tea call to me from my chair beneath a tree in our warm, windy backyard.

Stand still.  The trees ahead and the bushes beside you

Are not lost.  Wherever you are is called Here,

And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,

Must ask permission to know it and be known.

The forest breathes.  Listen.  It answers,

I have made this place around you.

If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.

No two trees are the same to Raven.No two branches are the same to Wren.

If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,

ou are surely lost.  Stand still.  The forest knows

Where you are.  You must let it find you.

-David Wagner