Yesterday, I spent 6 hours in a yoga room. But I didn’t teach. I didn’t even assist, all that I wanted to do was practice after the holidays. Its funny how vacations can just suck the life out of us sometimes.
Sometimes we just need to give ourselves a break, whether it’s mental or physical. I find that my best streaks of practice (by best, I mean that they feel the best) come after I have purposely relaxed for a day or two. Now, after that last week of dealing with family, eating too many almond milk mashed potatoes, I am ready to get back to what I do every day. I really missed it.
So I practiced all day, and took a hike down into the Auburn Ravine. That place is amazing, if you haven’t seen the Western States Trail, you should. But I was able to get away from everything, which I am starting to see that I need more. And at the end of the day, there wasn’t too much that could bring me down, I was blissed-out in my Samadhi (good feeling). Sometimes, we owe it to ourselves to make opportunities to feel that way.
Someone might say, “Elliot, you missed an entire day of productivity and it was a Monday! How do you consider yourself a valuable piece of society?” The truth is that I don’t. I think I could be replaced in pretty much any job that I were to get, fairly easily, no matter how hard I work or what my qualifications are. That is the message that I constantly get from the world of corporate jobs, so I chose not to contribute. Because at the end of the day, you are not more significant and your life is not more purposeful on the basis of how much you work. What matters is how you treat people. Not how many hours you spend working for something that will probably disappear in 15 years. So I choose to feel good, and feel happy and I’ll work hard later.
We strive so much for significance in this life and I am the biggest culprit of this. I want to make an impact on this planet. But something tells me that working mindlessly on things that I don’t agree with or even give a shit about won’t make that happen. So I feel good instead and let the rest come. Don’t let things get in the way of you being happy.
Life is a continuous process, even though it is demarcated by race, place, and time. Due to uninterrupted close relationship between memory and subliminal impressions, the fruits of actions remain intact from one life to the next, as if there were no separation between births.
-Patanjali