The Obstacle is the Practice

Transcript

Welcome to you.

The title of today’s talk is that is the practice. I was sitting in meditation just now for about an hour. A lot of the time for many months I’ve had this bad habit during meditation, not a terrible habit but a bad habit.

Say I’m sitting for 30 minutes and it gets 15 or 20 minutes in and I pick up my phone to see the time to see how much is left. Of course I can continue the meditation after that and I’m more or less fine.

I don’t have to disclude that meditation somehow because I got distracted but on the other hand, I don’t want to do that.

I don’t want to judge myself at the same time I want to take right action.

So when those thoughts arise like “Oh, I wonder how long left it is?” or even today I got very close to the end of the meditation and I started to think to myself “No puedo aguantar más” I can’t take it anymore!

I was losing my patience.

Here’s the thing about those kind of thoughts, that is the practice.

A thought presents itself to you as an impulse and the meditation practice when you’re trying to do any type of meditation, when the thought presents itself to you as an impulse, the idea is to treat it as another thought.

Easier said than done.

I remember sitting in the temple of Wat Tham Krabok in Thailand and sometimes things would go wrong, people would break the rules. If someone breaks the rules you might say, that person should be excluded. They should be kicked out of the temple, rules are rules.

But really here’s the thing, somebody else breaks the rules and you allow that to disturb your peace. That is the practice.

The practice is even when things don’t go as expected, that is the practice to maintain on the path and embrace your peace. Or embrace the idea that you’ve become a bit disturbed.

A lot of things happen, I know people are trying to fulfill their goals and chase their dreams, likewise what happens is they say “I would be able to write my novel if only I could just get a break from my family or if..if…if..”

There’s so many ifs and you can keep making ifs for as long as you live.

Now here’s the thing, once again, here’s the practice. People out in the world, people who have been successful and they’ve found ways to do things, the way they did it is not allowing those excuses to get in the way of what they wanted to accomplish.

What I’ve found for myself…once upon a time I had a day job. Fortunately I don’t right now.

I would say to myself “If I could take a holiday go over to Bangladesh for a few months and chill out there I could write a novel or do something creative.

Whatever it is I’d have the time.

When I did have the time I wasn’t motivated because I wasn’t practicing because I hadn’t maintained those daily habits.

That is the practice, the practice even when there are obstacles

The obstacles are the practice.

Another thing that people talk about say medicating every day or doing some spiritual practice prayer or exercising every day, what ever it is the practice that you’re doing to improve your life.

Or just enjoy those sweet moments and you get a couple of weeks in and your habits aren’t fully formed and something happens to disrupt your practice and you allow it to disrupt your practice.

Or for some reason you can’t go to the gym that day, you’re sick and you don’t even go and do stretches.

Then the next day passes and you don’t go either.

That is the practice, that is the moment when your willpower, when your resolve is really tested. When you lose your momentum and you have to get back on the horse that is the real practice.

That is the test. Thank you so much for listening, thank you for continuing on your path for greater self knowledge and greater happiness. Even in those moments when it gets hard, even in those moments when it seems like you’ve given up, getting yourself back and beginning again.

It’s like Abraham Hicks said “You can begin again.”

And you can, that’s the practice guys.

Thanks for listening, have a great day, I will talk to you soon.