We all have had those incredible experiences; watching the sun rise majestically over a mountaintop or ease into an luminescent ocean horizon, we have all been witness to the breathtaking colorplay of light and dark and the magnificence of star studded skies. These experiences remind us how insignificant we truly are in the larger aspect of creation, they are humbling and allow us a moment to come out of our self importance and into greater connectivity with our universe. These experiences give us a unique sense of awe that draws us out of our busy mind and the mundanity of our everyday life and into the present moment, even if just for a fleeting moment. It doesn’t matter how many beautiful sunsets we see, each one is unique, and if we allow, it can be as if we are “seeing” a sunset for the first time. That is the Zen concept of a Beginner’s Mind in a nutshell, the ability to experience a sunset with true joy as long as we don’t compare it to the one we viewed last week.
Incomparable experiences make lasting memories and those are what drive us to seek more, unique experiences, whether it is to book yet another tropical vacation, to plan a weekend trip to the coast, or even just to reserve a table at our favorite restaurant for an evening. When those events have passed though, we are then relegated to return to our “regular” life and all of its sameness, as if our daily life can not exist as an awe inspiring event. What if it can though?
Traditional yoga cultivates a meditative practice, withdrawing from the story telling mind, decompressing the stress within the physical body, and conscious breathing; each inhale and each exhale, performed with intention. True yoga invites us to settle into a deeper connection with the Self, that which lies deep inside as energy and to observe the external influences of our lives without attachment or significant emotional response.
By comparison, the mind is a series of neural firings and programed responses based on past experiences, inherently overriding the deeper part of our Self in order to keep us “safe”. At the most primal level the mind exists to provide judgement of each life experience so that our human form can survive our current circumstances. The problem begins when the mind doesn’t allow for the dawning of each new day to be fresh, new, and sacred. You see, we often default to the mind as the interpreter of our life experiences, and “it” is always comparing new events to ones that have already passed, which doesn’t allow for our being in awe in “this” moment as it exists in its uniqueness. Our mind is on constant replay and it tells stories based on the process of rewind, replay, rewind, replay as if we can be defined in this moment by what already happened in the last moment, or even a moment 10 years ago.
As a yoga teacher and health counselor I hear many life stories, I listen to how people define themselves and their bodies, using the retrieval of past memories as the example by which they live their current lives. I often hear statements such as “I always do…”, “I never do…”, “I can’t do…”, “I’m always too…”, etc, etc, etc… Believe me, I do this too, every day I define myself by what has happened in my past, but then my yoga mind stops my primitive mind from elaborating on the “story”, and I question whether the story I’m telling myself can be rewritten, reinvented, and reimagined. I’ve never allowed any other person to tell me what I have to be, so why would I allow my mind to hold me in the parameters of what I have already experienced? Instead, I have begun to allow and invite new experiences to push me into a greater expansion of who I am. That is my practice of yoga, and to be more exact I will say that is my process of developing a meditative mind.
Meditation invites us to withdraw from the primal mind and to give way to a greater experience of life, allowing each moment to be revealed as if they (the moments) were fresh and new experiences. When we allow this process to take over the usual mindset we begin to come into the exciting newness of life, every single day, as if it were a gift to be opened. Yes! Each day can be viewed as a treasure, to experience dawn as a beautiful opportunity to embrace life while in full awareness, regardless of the circumstances.
To be clear, this is a daily practice, and when done every day it develops muscle memory, if you can compare the mind to a muscle. If we continue the practice of living each day with “mindful” intention we can override basic survival primal mind, we can become less attached to the comparing, judging, story telling voice. We become less reactive to the mind chatter and so we can decrease the emotional responses which are the culprits of stress in both mind and body. When we begin to just observe the mind and all of its retrieval of past experiences as is it were a movie on replay, we can come into the pleasant emotional state of “now”, unencumbered by the emotions old memories might once have stirred up. Now is the only moment which truly matters and can be savored even during the normality of daily routines.
When we choose to relinquish the mind to a mechanism for ideas, inspiration, and creativity rather than judgement, self deprecation, and critique, we can begin to settle into the awareness of the present moment and then to notice all that is genuine, beautiful, and sacred in our every day life. When we are present with our life our relationships improve, our moods begin to become more balanced, we develop a greater sense of what our bodies need to build health and vitality. When we bring our mind back to the “now” we are more likely to be inspired by the simple things and less likely to keep turning to our electronic devices, substances, or even food for stimulation. Coming into presence in our life allows us to become more intimately involved with ourselves, and to be comfortable with that intimacy.