Again, I ask: how can we regain our wonder, our zest for life?
One morning this past week I woke up and didn’t want to get out of bed. I had a
very busy past few days and realized that I didn’t want to do anything.
It took me a while to realize that even my enthusiasm for life and my wonder
about all the beauty that is in nature and the building of stars, as I talked about
last week, didn’t motivate me enough to enter into another full day of service to
people. I felt no desire to mentally and intellectually activate my life. The
wonders of nature were not helping me regain my zest.
I needed to rest!
In the Christian tradition that day of rest is Sunday. In Judaism, it is the Saturday
Sabbath which begins on Friday night. Even Islam has a specific day of rest and
focus on the spiritual dimensions of life. For the Muslims that day begins
Thursday evening and continues all day on Friday.
But my needed day of rest was none of those days.
I could have done what most people do – get a cup of coffee to get myself going.
But I don’t like coffee. Or I could do as many yogi(ni)s do – drink a cup of chai
tea to start my day.
Instead, I decided to sit in my comfortable chair and stare out the window at the
activity of nature. This stationary posture (similar to sitting in meditation)
gradually moved my body into a gentle diaphragmatic flow of breathing and my
mind began to just go blank. I wasn’t asleep. I wasn’t focusing on my breath. I
was just staring.
Gradually, my internal spirit woke up! I began to feel some movement of life. I
got up and started to move into some spontaneous yoga stretches called the
joints and glands postures, bringing some of that joyful awareness from the stare
and movement into my physical body. Then, because I used to have a habit of
doing a yoga practice called “agni sara,” which means activating the essence of
the fire in my body, I began performing that practice.
I felt alive again! I felt more and more refreshed and mentally was aware that my
inner, divine being was bringing me back to the zest and enthusiasm I needed to
perform all the tasks that were before me that day. I felt joyful again! I felt ready
to move into the day. The day of rest that I thought I needed only took an hour or
so.
I thanked the divinity within me and continued my day with the awareness that
this divine Source of Life and Zest was always with me, always there ready to
lead me forward. All I needed to do was “rest.”
I bow to that Divinity within you.
Comments