The Beauty of Practice III

Imagine yourself as an ocean. Now imagine yourself as a rock tumbling through the waves of that ocean, grating upon sand, other rocks, shells, and seaweed, and being smoothed by the incessant movement of the waves. This is you and your practice.

Stepping into your practice is like diving into the ocean of you – all of your complexities churn and shift as you are buffeted by excitement, curiosity, doubt, frustration, exhaustion, and bliss. These are the thoughts and sensations that arise within the context of your practice. Some of these sensations might be residual from your day or your week, others might be hidden on the ocean floor of your psyche, just waiting for the churning of your body and mind to jiggle them loose. But it is all you – you are the rock, cleansed by the practice, debris shaken loose, rough edges smoothed. And you are the ocean, your own world, deep and enveloping, in which anything can happen. In your practice you plunge into the depths. You move. You see what arises.

Your practice, like the ocean, is always right there waiting for you to step into it. But in a sense you are never not practicing. Everything you do feeds your practice in some way. So the relevant question becomes:

How deeply are you willing to dive into the ocean of your practice?

Or, to paraphrase:

How deeply are you willing to dive into the ocean of you?