Return to Practice

Transcript

I’d like to talk about returning to the practice.

It happens that I have been going to the gym and yoga a lot. Sometimes I wake up just a little too late.

I get my 20 minutes of meditation in during the mornings and so, last week, I don’t know how many times I’ve meditated.

Maybe twice, which is less than my highest expectations. That’s fine, that’s part of the process.

Monday I was about to leave to go do something and I thought I should meditate. Maybe I thought it like that in an auto-exigent way. Or maybe I thought now I could meditate.

I have time, maybe I need to leave so I don’t do 20 minutes. Maybe I do ten minutes.

One conscious minute in a day can begin a life full of transformation.

So maybe I didn’t verbalize it like that in the moment.

So I sat for ten minutes and at the end, I said to myself thanks for doing this, thanks for taking the time, thanks for getting back on the horse and returning to the practice.

That’s when the practice really counts.

In fact some will say that is the practice. The practice is easy, the practice isn’t when your concentration is very focus.

The practice is when your mind wanders and goes to something else. We start thinking of daily activities. How you’re going to hang up the washing or pay the bills this month.

Eventually you realize you are thinking once again you become conscious and return your mind to the object of meditation and then in those moments, everything makes sense.

Or maybe that is to say nothing makes sense.

Maybe nothing needs to make sense when you return to that space in meditation, your body a sort of vague suggestion.

Your mind starting to loosen it’s grip. Your attention turns wide and you start to feel something.

What is it? What is it that you feel in that moment?

Something very difficult to describe.

Likewise when we turn away from the practice, when we become unconscious. We allow momentum to take over and we don’t apply discipline.

It might be a few days, a few weeks, a few months or a few years when finally we bring our consciousness into that moment and decide now I return to practice, just like the fable of the prodigal son returning to his father’s house.

Yes I am here again, now I am ready to practice, to do the right thing, to express clearly those thing that are in my heart that may reveal even greater, even holier secrets.

Now we have a moment to return to practice.

Thank you for listening, thank you when you do fall asleep and stop practicing, thank you for those moments for when you bring your awareness back and practice.