It is fruitless to try to get rid of our thoughts.
Meditation is not necessarily the absence of thoughts, but discovering the peace around them.
Like the still night air around the sounds of the crickets and other bugs, so too their is still space around our thoughts.
In this space between and around our thoughts, we discover deeper and deeper meditation.
In order to come into deeper stillness, calmer waters in the mind, we need to pass through the chattery surface first.
Some days this can take quite long, on others not.
Do not be plagued or deterred by these surface thoughts. This is a normal part of meditation. Stillness for most of us most of the time is relative, not absolute. Gradually and unpredictably we drop deeper and deeper into stillness.
Like a deep sea diver, we pass through the many thoughts at the surface of the mind, dropping deeper into meditation…
and stillness.
Yoga is evenness of mind in the midst of life’s vicissitudes and flurry of emotions and thoughts, a greater steadiness and thereby a greater peace.
This is the gift or fruit, the prasad, of regular practice.
Regular practice is necessary to maintain even a semblance of steadiness in this world of pleasure and pains, joys and sorrows.
Meditation and yoga are like tracing a dot-to-dot starting from where we are now to a quieter, more centered space.
Because life is always changing, and we are never really in the same place twice, the route of these dots is never the same.
Each time unique, never the same path twice.
Take a moment, next time you have a moment, when drinking a coffee or tea, and close your eyes following a delicious sip.
Let your attention ride the joy of this sip like a surfer on a wave. Ride this joy letting it take you inward to its source.
Drink of this!
Do you ever feeling like you’re being led, jerked around, or misguided by something unconsciously running the show?
Deep habits of behavior, thoughts, and feelings can limit our experience of the innate joy of the Self.
Regular and devoted practice of yoga and meditation can gradually sever our unconsciously being run by these samskaras, like cutting the strings of a marionette, freeing us to move more of our own volition with this joy.
May the dawn of your new day be like that of a hiker’s through a mountain pass to the expanses stretching beyond.
Like a beautiful sunset, meditation creeps toward us, when suddenly it is here stunning us into awe and silence… giving the mind a most-appreciated vacay from its incessant activity.
What a great way to thank and restore your mind for all it does!
Sufficiently in awe, the humbled ego bows to and honors its source.
Follow your awe to its source again and again, and constricted states of misunderstanding will melt away.
Just as a hot tub can melt away stress, the tapas or heat of meditation and yoga can burn away constrictions that limit the flow and expression of the prana, the vital life force.
The Every Day Yogi 