Difficult Simplicity

One of the gifts I have received over the many years of teaching is that of an ever-expanding community. Each week I get emails from people, locally and globally, particularly from people in Australia and Canada. So, it's a really cool thing when someone I have worked with in one of those locations sends me a message about their practice. One of the main intentions I had years back in starting an email list was to stay connected to people I wasn't able to see year round, so it's deeply gratifying to stay in a role of supporting people on their yogic journey.

Such an incident happened this past week which was the catalyst for my thought of the week-Difficult Simplicity. A student who I've been working with in Australia over the past few years has made tremendous progress in their daily meditation practice and was beginning to wonder if these gains had evaporated due to a recent bout of thoughts pulling him all over the place. He likened his experience to the Sharon Salzberg metaphor of sitting on the banks of a river (meditation) with boats floating down the river (our thoughts)...and realizing that sometimes we find ourselves on the boat without knowing how we got there in the first place. My student said that he had an entire "flotilla" of thoughts floating down the river and was doubting his ability and the gains he had been making. Here was my reply to him:

Sometimes what we need to be reminded of pops up in front of us just at the right time. These are turbulent times...it's truly a challenge to find our center and, in that, to realize that there is no loss of gains as this present moment is the only one that truly has power. It's the difficult simplicity of that...remembering to be exactly where we're at. I am constantly being reminded to focus on my own path, to keep my eyes within my vision as the moment I start looking outside to what this or that person is doing, I question my own journey. I love being reminded to stay within my own heart. 

But it ain't easy!

It seems to be a human condition that we like to make things more complicated then they need to be. Confucius, who died in 479 BC, said, "Life is simple, but we insist on making it more complicated". And Henry David Thoreau (who died in 1862) said "Life is frittered away by detail. Simplify. Simplify." What these two people and statements have in common is that they recognized how we like to make things harder than they need to be and, in the process, we create more suffering than is necessary. And both of these people didn't have iPhones or advanced technologies to add to the complexity and yet, they still recognized the human condition of busyness and complication, supporting the notion of simplification.

If we explore the path of yoga and meditation, it can sound quite basic. Can you find how your breath is moving in/out of your body? Can you relax any tension found in your body? Can you come back to present moment awareness? Do you carve out 10-minutes/day to sit in contemplation? Do you have non-negotiable "me time" scheduled every day? It sounds simple, right? Well, the ideas may be simple, but that doesn't mean they're easy. So many people I come across find it challenging to answer the above questions. It's as though carving out time to look inward is the last thing on the to-do list, I mean, most of us are just trying to get through the day with our basic needs being met along the way.  And this is the difficult part of these simple practices. We are challenged to make it a priority and when we do take the time it can feel selfish and "unproductive".  Sometimes when we make the effort, it's anything but zen-like so it can feel discouraging. We're seeking inner calm and we come face-to-face with our inner storm instead.

This is why we need people to support us along the path. To reflect back their own and others experiences of turbulence, which is a normal part of awakening consciousness. We want to take a look at the long-range forecast, not tomorrow's prediction, as this practice deepens over countless times of coming to it on and off the mat or cushion. It sounds simple and parts of it are, but that doesn't make it easy. My thought this week is to honor the idea that being human, we have a tendency to make it harder and more complex than may be required. To hold patience in our hearts every time we step onto our mats, releasing expectations as to what may happen or what experiences we may have previously had. To know that the difficulties we face in the practice bring us more mental and spiritual agility for when things get even more challenging in our daily lives. Yes...it's simple and difficult. And we can trust those who have gone before us that the ride is worth it