Guruvir

There are those days where you wake and it’s just not going to happen: you are late, you are tired, you are grumpy, and most, you are tired of this incarnation. So you brush your teeth and instead of sitting down to meditate and find silence and bliss and peace, you just eat your favorite breakfast or you down a cup of coffee, and then you leave. “I’m not going to meditate this morning,” you say to yourself as you walk outside. And that’s okay because you do it every other morning, except the mornings you don’t.

So you get to the subway where upon entering a stuffy little car filled with people and all their morning grumpiness you wish you had found that silence, because even those ear buds stuck as close to your brain as you can manage, are not going to keep you in a happy place. What do you do?

What do I do?

I slowly rescroll my ipod to something more meditative: some kirtan that I can’t resist. I strategically wait for a seat and then I begin to let myself go to my place. I close my eyes, breathe deep the scent of coffee, feel the rumble of existence beneath me and begin to sway my head ever so slightly…aah meditative bliss.

Now: this is also a good chance to check-in with the “progress” of my meditation practice. Of course, I’m not doing that because I’m meditating, but if I were to take a brief moment and consciously stop meditating, I would notice, that I had been meditating, and had

1. Forgotten I was on a subway which means that I had gone deep.
2. Did not feel the stares of people, who upon opening my eyes ever so slightly, I could see looking my way because…
3. I had gone so deeply, that I began chanting under my breath and…
4. Upon realizing all of these things, was not embarassed and did not care one single bit, which means that the years of social conditioning are finally coming undone.

Noting my progress, I close my eyes again and return to the silence.