do not run away from yourself

This week, another Zen exerpt – from Zen Questions  

'Simply do not run away from yourself. Our society and culture offer us many distractions, many entertaining toys to help us run away from ourselves, to not be present with this body-mind right now. So our practice is fairly radical, an entryway to true joyful ease. Just sit and be present with this body-mind as it is, enjoy your breathing, not trying to avoid thoughts and feelings, just breathe into them. Do not try to do anything with them either. … and later we start to become more deeply familiar with our own physical and mental habits. …. And when we show up and befriend ourselves, we start to see more subtly the ways we try to grab onto or get rid of things. But we have to forgive ourselves for being human beings.'

We don’t need to practice Zazen (Zen meditation) to notice this and to learn this lesson. In yoga, we become more conscious of the body-mind connection and bring awareness to our breathing and movement – we practice consciously, paying attention. We begin to experience becoming a witness to our thoughts as they appear and start to be more deeply familiar with our physical and metal habits.

We show up to yoga. We befriend our bodies. We befriend our minds. We become more aware of our habits, through our self-enquiry each week we become self-aware – of our tendencies to cling to things, or to avoid things. And we learn, slowly, to tolerate ourselves, as we are.

Reflecting this week - can I tolerate myself, as I am; befriend myself and, accept myself, just the way I am. Perfectly imperfect; imperfectly perfect.

Resolving to be kind to yourself this week, to tolerate yourself, just the way you are.