Fear

Time is flying! Have you noticed how our perception of time is somewhat weird at the moment? Suddenly, you wake up and it feels like you’ve lost three days or even an entire month? On the other hand there are things in our life that just don’t want to unravel how we would like them to and nothing seems to move forward…. Weird...but no worries, things are moving forward in an extremely fast pace, it’s just that our perception can’t keep up with it!

With thumb and first finger touching, hands resting gently on my knees, palms up, I tried out Chin Mudra for the first time, consciously. With curious awareness I sat on the cold stone floor of the ashram and turned my eye gaze upward toward my forehead center into Shambavi mudra. The buzz of flies and mosquitoes tried to lure me away from the inward turning of my mind. But concentration was working.

I am an impatient person. Almost nothing happens fast enough for me. I want things yesterday. Wait for something? No thanks. This is an attitude supported by our society, in my opinion. There’s an underlying belief that if something isn’t happening on our timeline we need to move on. I notice in myself and others that we don’t want to wait – we want things to happen instantaneously.

Do it now! Go against the grain, take an adventure, thwart off the oh-so-average, menial life you have been living. I once read a story about a rocking chair -- yes, a rocking chair. It started out by painting a picture. An image of a grandparent seated in an old, wooden rocking chair on an outdoor patio overlooking a great expanse of open land. Sun shining, starry-eyed grandchildren gathered around waiting for yet another wild venture saga.

Life is continuously unfolding before us. Many of us try very hard to direct the course of life’s trajectory, which is not necessarily a bad thing. However, no matter how much we try to control, direct and predict where life will take us we can never fully know the future. In fact, the only thing we can count on is that life will definitely present us with unexpected twists and turns; why not learn to embrace the unexpected changes and find comfort in the unknowable future?

Fear is the enemy of peace. You cannot be in a state of fear and peace at the same time; one has to make room for the other.

In our modern world, stress and fear seem to be the ruler of the day. We fear our financial security. We fear for the safety of our children as they leave for school every morning. We are afraid of violence, being alone, never having enough.

There are also the deeper fears within us. The fear of others, the fear of being defined by others, fearing connections or lack thereof and fearing life’s challenges.

While looking at the overgrown parts of my vegetable garden, I felt a combination of regret and amazement. Regret because I have obviously been neglecting the garden, hence the overgrown weeds, grasses, and vegetable plants that have flowered and gone to seed. However, I was also amazed because I could still harvest quite a lot from it.