Sometimes the summer overwhelms our practice with family gatherings and travel. Even if it doesn’t, there can come times when the practice feels like work - stale and heavy. It can feel discouraging to go to the cushion, to sit down to practice - as if we have to go through everything we went through to establish our practice before it fell away with the demands of family, social occasions, summer vacation…. or crises, emergencies, disruption.
There can be any number of reasons our practice time succumbs to the demands of our “off-the-cushion” life.
But like everything else in life, our practice too is cyclical, has seasons, waxes and wanes. Sometimes when we “resume” our practice or start over, we find we have to go back to the beginning, back to basics, back to breath awareness, just sitting for 15-20 minutes and working up to longer periods and more varied practices.
This is actually great practice.
Because as we start over, we may notice we are not starting over from the same place. We may step into the same stream, but the banks have eroded, the ripples have moved as the bottom sands shifted, the water is different.
And so are we.
So this is a wonderful opportunity to practice where we are now - with the conditions that exist now - in the stream that is flowing now. Our practice might be like the Guggenheim spiraling upward with new and different art work on display, or perhaps it’s like the ever-widening circles in a pond when a pebble is tossed in, or the looping patterns of the hawks or eagles riding the thermals along a mountain ridge.
This starting over is a natural part of practice. On a minute by minute level. On a day by day level. On a seasonal level. In the wider spans of our lifetimes.
Practice evolves, changes, becomes more hidden and then more apparent again. And often, whether we are sitting or not, our practice is going with us into our worlds, informing our actions, helping us notice when we’ve become crabby or unskillful, supporting us when we bring wisdom to the forefront.
So come, let’s begin again together. Exploring what’s present for us now. Noticing similarities and discovering differences. We’ve all learned and grown this past year plus of Covid.
Much of it may seem dark and disturbing but there are wondrous silver linings to notice in our own growth, in our own ability to relate to the ever-changing world we find ourselves in.
