A new year, a new beginning. Another chance to follow those resolutions I make every year--to eat less, exercise more; spend less, save more; be less impatient and more tolerant; to be a "better" person. This year there is a new resolution--I vow to go deeper into my yoga practice and to work on meditation, to listen more carefully to my own "still, small voice."
The calm I get from visiting the seashore is still with me--the crashing of the waves on the beach at night, the smell of the salt spray. I tell myself that if I lived at the beach, meditation would be a snap, but I know that the world would intrude there, too. A living would still have to be made, groceries purchased, the car would need gas. Sand in the carpet and mildew on the walls would need to be dealt with, not left for someone else to take care of when I depart from the hotel at vacation's end.
I need to find that calm within me, and learn to keep it with me, not only in the darkness, at the seashore, or at yoga class, but every day. For me, the difficulty is not in sitting still, I for I find that fairly easy, but in stilling my mind. My teacher says to act as though your mind is a train station and the thoughts the trains that pass through. Acknowledge them and let them move on. But what if it's important, something I can't forget. . . acknowledge it and move on. But what if. . . acknowledge it and move on. It will still be there later, oh, yes, believe me, it will.
And if I can find that calm within me, maybe I will be less impatient, more tolerant, a "better" person. Maybe it will help me eat less, exercise more, spend less and save more. . . Or maybe I will just be a "better" person because I have learned to slow down and listen to my own still, small voice.
