Hi again! I went away for the weekend...well, okay, I didn't actually go anywhere, but the days were too full of weekend-type activities for me to find time to write to you. For which I apologize; I was thinking about you. Especially on Saturday, when I completely forgot to meditate and then felt a surge of guilt, because I'd somehow let all of you down...Eventually I got over myself, and thankfully also got over the momentary and childish urge to cover up my missed day. We're all human here, right?
In the original article about the 30-Day Practice Challenge, the interviewer asks the creator of the first challenge, Andrea McQuillin if she ever "cheated". She responds, "No, I haven't cheated. There are days when I haven't practiced." Think about that for a moment. What's the difference between cheating and not doing what you've set out to do? Being honest with yourself and others about it. Saturday was the first day I've missed this month--though I'll tell you, it's nearing 12:30 a.m. as I write this, and I am contemplating not practicing tonight. But you know what? I'm pretty sure I will. Something about my commitment to greeting each of you (almost) every day keeps me on the cushion. Thank you for being here with me. (Even though "here" is somewhere else for each of us...and isn't *that* a subject for contemplation?!)
Enough of my late-night ramblings! Back to our regularly scheduled inspiration. Why do we meditate? Here's one answer:
"To be this close to the moment in which our life is unfolding we need to cultivate a deeper awareness through the development of a meditation practice. Awareness is itself a healing quality. Where awareness is focused the deepest potentials for clarity and balance present themselves. Though what we are aware of may be incessantly changing, awareness itself remains a constant, a luminous spaciousness without beginning or end, without birth or death. It is the essence of life itself. It is what remains when all that is impermanent falls away. It is the deathless."
--from A Year to Live, Stephen Levine, 1997
Talk to you tomorrow!
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