During my time in India this winter, I met a holy man on the plane who was traveling to Rishikesh for a family wedding.
We spoke for a while about our meditation practices, Ayurveda, and Rishikesh real estate, and then he grew very solemn and confided in me:
He admitted, with some gravity, that he really didn’t want to be attending this wedding. In fact, he had tried like hell to get out of it, even blaming his bad leg—but his grandkids had filmed him walking around without his leg brace, proving he was physically capable, and foiled his efforts.
I burst out laughing on the plane.
Maybe it wouldn’t have been as funny if a friend offered the same admission of guilt; but the idea of this monk, with full beard and adornments, trying to deceive his family to get out of a wedding, was hilarious to me.
It was a welcome reminder that we’re all human.
None of us are perfect.
…But the good news is that there’s only evolution.
It can sometimes appear like we’re moving backwards, but when we take a longer view, only evolution is ever really happening.
In order for evolution to be possible, there must be room to evolve.
Asked to share advice for the incoming class of new Vedic Meditation teachers, one of my colleagues shared this powerful perspective:
"Think (and live!) in gerunds ("ing" ending) rather than participles ("ed"). We are always evolving, growing, learning: don't land and cling to (seeming) stillness. Balance is always in motion and the end (of training) is always the beginning (of so much more)."
Just being in a body is training.
If we didn’t still have more room to grow, we wouldn’t still be here.
This evolution doesn’t always happen as fast as we think it should, but who are we to be able to assess the correct speed of our own evolution, when we’re the ones being evolved in the first place?
The most frictionless way forward is paved with patience and grace.
“Let a man raise his self by his Self,
let him not debase his Self;
he alone, indeed, is his own friend,
he alone his own enemy.”
—Lord Krishna to Arjuna
We can’t bully ourselves into evolution.
Yanking on a flower won’t make it grow faster, but will damage it and stunt it’s growth.
What we can do is offer love and soma to this lower self.
But how can we, the ones in need of the love and soma, be the ones to offer it to ourselves?
Let’s discuss these and other ideas during Collective Effervescence, our online group meditation series, this Sunday February 11 at 9AM PT / 12PM ET / 6PM CET. Drop in for meditation only (first 30 min) or stay for discussion + Q&A on this and other life topics from the Vedic perspective. Join the WhatsApp group to receive reminders 24 hours before each session, or use the below links to have all upcoming dates automatically sync to your calendar.
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Music today is The Human Condition by Jhameel, dug deep from my collection from way back in 2011. “And shed our ignorance / Proclaiming acts of tolerance / And generosity and patience / This is the human condition.”