Lokah Samantha Sukhino Bhavantu
Lokah Samantha Sukhino Bhavantu
May all beings everywhere be happy and free.
This mantra reminds me to remember those who need a little extra or a lot of extra TLC (tender loving care). How can we support each other? How can we help each other? How can we emphasize with each other?
One of the main reasons I continue returning to this practice decades later is to feel clear, spacious and at ease. Another reason I/we practice is to clean out, clean up, burn away delusion, confusion, repetition. Maybe another is to be less engaged in our own thoughts, feelings and anxiety.
We all feel stress, anxiety, fear, and worry. Of course, having our feelings is perfectly human and natural. And yet, when we sit in our feelings and the churn of our thoughts and allow them to become fuel for our anxious fire we can often create more of them.
The collective stress has been waaaay up. Pandemic. Election. Moving backwards now in quarantine as this next covid wave is hitting again. Uncertainty in business. Uncertainty in the economy. Uncertainty with ______. And so, what do we tend to do with our personal and our collective stress?
To some degree, it’s the way we are framing our experience. Can we possibly identify a bit less to our own thoughts and feelings? The yoga practice asks us to sit in uncertainty. Which happens to be the whole of our life experience....even when we weren’t sure who our next President would be or when this pandemic will ever end. To feel our feelings. Not to ignore them. Yet, maybe not to sit in our own fire too long.
It can be helpful to empathize with how others might feel. To wonder and imagine the stresses that our friends, family and community members are experiencing. Again, not as a way of bypassing our own feelings, or our own experience. But as a way of not adding fuel to our fire. So our feelings don’t have to grow and become stronger just because we only reflect on those.
When we can get out of the mental loop, the repetitive feeling cycles, we remind ourselves of the fundamental nature of the mind. Beyond thoughts and feelings. Is blue sky. Calm water. A deep, expansiveness. Not to force anything with ourselves to happen. But by focusing on others, we tend to forget ourselves a bit. Not in a negative way. By focusing on others, we cool our churn a bit. And, this is about everyone feeling more happy and less stressed. We can find just the right balance when we focus a little less on ourselves and a little more on others.
How can we each contribute to the happiness, wellbeing and freedom for all beings? Simultaneously reducing our own fear, anxiety and stress?
Reflecting on this practice with you and sending you so much love and ease,
K
