Down By the River


As it is every year, the Azalea Walk at the National Arboretum fills me with joy and wonder. “Was it really this splendid last year?” one of my companions asked. “I go every year,” she said, “but I forget how gorgeous it is!” She comes back each year to remember the beauty and the awe. So, too, it can be with our practice. We stop going to class or practicing our meditation or asana for a while because we get too busy. Then we come back, and we ask ourselves how we could have forgotten the joy and beauty a steady practice brings us, and we are inspired to commit again.
Yesterday I asked about setting an intention to be blissful in every thing we do for a day. Having the intention is a good start (I might not even have thought of such an intention without my yoga practice). What I really want is to be able to manifest that intention. For me, I know that it is important for me to live more consciously and with more subtle discrimination (viveka) if I am to come close to living such intention.
A rare few live in bliss without effort. For the rest of us, that is why we have the practices. So we can practice moving into and resting in bliss.