Practicing for life

My title really should read something more like, “I used to practice for life as if life and practice were separate instances.”

I have an everyday practice: meditation, journaling, reading, listening. I come to my space and sit. This sitting sets an intention for the day, an intention to inhale and exhale, to receive and release whatever comes to me. Also, it sets an intention not to grasp after the past, nor to focus on some as-yet illusionary future destination; put simply, I practice being present.

I realized that if I could do this, receive without grasping and then let go, I might just be able to do the same when I am not in my meditation chair. In the beginning that practice began to reshape my living, especially my reactivity. I once imagined that I practiced so I could go out into the world. I have learned it is more nuanced than that. Everything is practice. The pattern I set here in my “sacred” space is the pattern everywhere.

Now, I might say, “My life is my practice.” I still do the work of my morning sit with an eye to reality because I then carry that into every moment of my day. I learn to see past the illusions and subterfuge I create and experience in everyday living to the deeper flow, subtle and just below the visible “surface.”