Pay Yourself First

It's amazing what can happen in six weeks.  Life ebbs and flows in rhythms, inertias develop and grow, experiences fold into one another.

For the month of February, I was regularly attending my Sunrise Yoga practice.  I was writing.  I was grooving in a certain rhythm.  Then bouts of fevers and upheavals for the kids and my wife and I, a busier work schedule, sleepless nights, and what seemed like an endless winter lead to my divergence to a new rhythm.  I want to call this undesirable, I want to say that it was bad that I "lost" my Sunrise Rhythm.  If I commune with my centered self, however, I remember that this new rhythm is simply different than its predecessor - not above or below, or better or worse.   A label of judgment has no place in the pursuit of truth.  All is welcome, for all IS.  The path that keeps me smiling is that which welcomes this new rhythm as a friend, an experience worth having, an experience to be grateful for.  I've read that, "What you resist persists.  What you look at disappears."  Life shows up to be acknowledged, not denied.  After all, Life, as it shows up, is reality.  It may as well be seen.  Once it is seen, then it may be altered if one wishes.  How can we change something to which we deny existence?  As long as I hold to the perception of my new rhythm being bad, and I grieve the loss of my old rhythm, I am unable to accept the offering of a new moment.  I am resisting the present and clinging to the past.  I am trading reality for a memory.  To release the memory and settle steadily in reality, I breathe in, I notice, I breathe out, I notice.  I notice first I am here.  I notice second I am breathing.  I notice third I am hearing, I am smelling, I am seeing (perhaps the back of eyelids).

So Here I Am.  The weather is taking a turn, the early morning grass is ever inviting (and my bare feet eager to oblige), my kids are sleeping through the night, and I am envisioning a new rhythm.  Sunrise, glorious sunrise.

An early morning practice equates to the advice so many of us have heard on building financial savings - pay yourself first.  Wake up, and pay yourself first.  Not your email, not your facebook, not your laundry, not your dishes, not your cluttered table, not your children (gotta get up before them).  Pay.  Your. Self.  Take 10 minutes to sit, to lay down with headphones on and rock out, to dance in your basement, in your yard, to sing.  Get into your body.  Get into your mind.  Get into whole being.  Of course, you always are in your whole being - there is no where else to be.  There is only the thinking that you are somewhere else.  Acknowledge that thinking, then let it float away like a cloud - allow sunshine to reveal itself.  Cast your first attentions on yourself rather than your things.  Don't keep yourself at arms length.  Get intimate (get in to mate) with yourself.  Love yourself.  Get into yourself.  From there, Life flows.  Let it flow FROM you, not around you or past you.

Love, Love, Shine On :-)