I started this blog from the inspiration I felt one morning, a few weeks ago now, while watching the sunrise. I then set out to return to the sunrise every morning to continue this thread of inspiration and enjoy the benefits that I felt from these experiences.
The first few days I woke up around 5am, sometimes before my alarm even sounded, eager and ready to bike to the reservoir and get on with it. I was riding high on the freshness and clarity of these experiences, a sort of "honey moon" phase. Eventually, reality caught up with my ambition.
I am a father of an (amazing) almost one-year-old girl (and husband to her beautiful mother), I work late some nights, and have not experienced myself to generally be a morning person. Somewhere during the second week I began feeling sluggish when attempting to wake up early. I think perhaps some of the initial inspiration and enthusiasm had faded, and I feel like I simply needed more sleep than I was getting. This became disheartening.
Was my Sunrise Journey to Enlightenment ending?
Of course not.
I called on the tools of my practice. I remembered to breathe, I remembered to be flexible, I remembered to smile. If I don't practice early (an added ingredient is that sometimes my wife needs the early hours to get herself to work, so I take baby duty) I practice later on in the day -- usually during Marley's morning nap. One thing that I know to be true is that making something a high priority is different than doing it when it "fits your schedule". Your priorities will never just happen to "fit your schedule". You need to make them fit your schedule, or, rather, build your schedule around your priorities.
With that being said, I also noticed the tension that I created by not being flexible, by thinking that I HAVE to catch the sunrise or all is lost. Yes the sunrise is a wonderful event to experience, but at the end of the day, it's just a sunrise. It's just an event. It's just an experience -- like any other. Experiences are what we make of them. I found myself putting all my faith into the sunrise experiences to generate my clarity and inspiration, so that in a small way I felt the seeds of attachment -- not quite addiction, but I can see how addictions grow from attachment. I just NEED the sunrise or I have NOTHING.
Now I see that my clarity and inspiration is born of my will for it to be. The sunrise experience is a tool that I'm using to remind myself of this truth. Sort of like the notion that the hardest part of going running is putting on your running shoes. Once that happens, most likely, you'll be running. The willpower to take the first step and put on your shoes is crucial. For me, this is what I was using the sunrise for. The willpower to get out to experience it was of utmost value. From there, everything flowed...perhaps not from the sunrise itself, but from my exercised will. Also, there is the added value of watching the world come alive, and the remembrance of what's really going on that strikes when a giant glowing ball of warmth ascends from the horizon. However, first and foremost, the true benefit is the exercise of will -- the realization that simply because I want something to be so, I can make it so.
As I write this post, I have not been on my yoga mat today, though I am planning to get on it soon. You could say that the inspiration and clarity that I feel writing this now is from the ripple effect, or the lingering principle -- what you do carries with you, and the more you do it the more powerful it becomes. The more that I build my sunrise yoga practice -- or even simply the "sunrise yoga consciousness" in which I remember to breathe, stay relaxed, appreciate Life, etc. -- the more it will continue to swell into my Life, whether I miss a day or not.
Keep going, don't quit, be patient (with yourself especially), choose Love, smile at fear, all is coming.
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