I’m on a yoga retreat in Puerto Rico. Our theme today is “I flow with the river of life.” Oh, yes. Things are so much less difficult, life is so much easier if i just go with the flow.
Yet i have spent years of my life (and maybe you have too) fighting against the current. I want a relationship that has ended. I want one of my relatives to be a different person than she is. I want my supervisor at work to smarten up. I want things to be different than they are. I-want-things-to-be-different-than-they-are is a sure-fire recipe for stress and suffering.
I don’t want cancer = stress
I don’t want to die = suffering
I don’t want…. (fill in the blank with your own I-don’t-want), and that equals unsatisfactoriness too.
Now do a thought experiment. Think “I have cancer.” and try not to have an opinion about it. Try not to have a judgment about it. Can you say “I have cancer” like you say, “The sky is blue”?
Of course not, but give it a whirl. And keep whirling the mind back to this moment of blue sky and a warm house. Sitting at your computer and reading this blog. Period. That is all. This is this moment of seeing-hearing (internally)-touching and maybe smelling and tasting. Give the mind a rest for half a second and notice the flow of life this moment.
