An On-Going Hiker's Journal.. (beginning) July 2009

April 10, 2012, Lakewood, CO

08:44:22, hours MDT

...continued hiker’s meditation…

Remember it is not what we become saturated with— that becomes the growth and turning points in our living...BUT... how much of this saturation we are able to lay by the wayside as we practice coming into the moment. Our creativity relies on the latter and for some practitioners this gives them an inner living that becomes unmistakably rich-- with feeling and depth.

This practice is truly REMARKABLE…

Meditations from the Mat, Rolf Gates, Katrina Kenison

Day 160

Only through skill does balance come.

Donna Farhi

“Firm and relaxed, steady and sweet, effortless and focused— where do these words lead? In daily life, we’re bombarded by sensation: sights, sounds, smells, physical sensations, fantasies and memories, hopes and dreams, fears and realities, duties and responsibilities, everything from the fact of our mortality to the need to buy some more toilet paper. This bombardment over- stimulates us and we become reactive. Saturated by experience, we lose sight of who we are. We react in the moment, out of the tangle of past experiences. So, a red light is not just a red light, it is all of the times I have been late, all of the times I haven’t been late, what the army taught me about being on time, what I imagine others will think of me for being late…somewhere underneath all this there might even lurk the fact that I don’t want to go wherever it is I am going at the moment, so I am dragging my feet. All of this and a whole lot more inform my reaction to the stoplight. In the chaos of over- stimulated reactivity, clear seeing becomes an impossibility; skillfulness in action irrelevant. My thoughts, my words, and my deeds don’t add up; I’m living in illusion.

“Yoga opposes this condition with practices aimed at quieting the mind, the body, and the spirit. On the mat, we have a microcosm of our lives. Bombarded with sensation, we can become overwhelmed and reactive, or we can begin to acquire skill in the art of life. Where do we begin? I suppose we could start with the words “firm and relaxed,” “steady and sweet,” “effortless and focused,” and see what happens”