Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Human Perfection...it doesn't exist.

Belated Happy New Year everyone!

"The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection..." ~George Orwell~

When I first stared blogging, I checked out other yoga related blogs for ideas and would find blogs that hadn't had a post in months, years and thought to myself that's not cool. And now here I am, 2 months since my last blog with karma biting me in the butt.

Let's do a little review over the last few months.  My 88 year old mom had two back surgeries in 3 weeks prior to Thanksgiving , Christmas, New Years, running a business, writers block, procrastination (blah, blah, blah)  and then red-faced because it had been so long.  Sound familiar?  I know that I am not alone in this cycle, we all start something with the best of intentions and life just gets in the way. But the problem isn't that we get side tracked.  It's when we come to the red-faced part of the cycle and just quit.  Just like that.  Sound familiar?  No judgment here by the way.

We are so hard on ourselves, expecting perfection where perfection doesn't exist, forgetting that we are human after all. 

Buddha gave us The Four Noble Truths, the essence of his teachings. It was these four principles that the Buddha came to understand during his meditation under the bodhi tree. The first one is life is dukkha, that life is suffering. But before he even gets to the second one, he breaks down the first one with what he called six occasions when life is pain that applies to everyone, rich, poor, young old.

1.      The trauma of birth.
2.      The pathology of sickness.
3.      The morbidity of decrepitude.
4.      The phobia of death.
5.      To be tied to what one abhors.
6.      To be separate from what one loves.

Wow that's intense. I know it's a lot to take it but he reminds us that's OK not to be perfect, we got a lot stuff going on. The moral of the story?  It's human to get side tracked and red-faced, it's ok.  Just get back on the horse, or blogging, or yoga, or eating healthier.  Or whatever your intention was, don't stop trying.

To help get you back on track of whatever path you are on I am sharing a link to "10 changes you didn't know you were making by practicing yoga".

I'm back.....and don't forget to breathe.