The Meditator

(An excerpt from our upcoming book)

The Meditator

“Things work out best for those who make the best of how things work out.” --John Wooden

We can often worry so much about trying to be perfect, or “the best” at what we do that we lose ourselves completely in it and thereby our chances of success.

We can forget that the journey of life is what matters far more than the destination for only the journey can take us there.

To truly understand what it means ‘to work to master the journey itself’ I love this story.

Three monks are meditating for enlightenment atop a blissful mountain that sits impressively above the clouds. The first monk has his eyes open, the next has his eyes closed and the third is dancing and singing with his shirt off like a goofball.

The first monk asks, “Buddha, how much longer must I meditate for enlightenment?”

Buddha smiles and says, “You need at least a thousand more years of meditation.”

The first monk grunts in response as the challenge ahead was truly daunting. In theory that could be 100 lifetimes with no sex, pleasure or possessions, just meditation. And then they may reach enlightenment to become better healers and so on.

The next monk opens his eyes then asks, “Buddha what about me? I’m doing it better.”

Buddha smiled and said, “You also need at least one thousand more years of meditation.”

The second monk sighed and said, “Man I must really suffer for enlightenment…”

The third one paused his dancing and singing and turned to Buddha and said, “What about me?”

The other two monks laughed and said, “Ha look at him, he needs at least ten thousand more years!”

Buddha smiled warmly and said, “You need at least at thousand more years of dancing and singing.”

To which the third monk happily went about his meditations for enlightenment.

The moral is to not only try and enjoy the journey itself but to actually make those changes within our environments, within ourselves, our homes and work to make them more positive, efficient, supportive and rewarding. The better we do that; the less effort our other actions will take and the more results we will get.

As each day goes by, we need to casually look at each area of our lives, it’s organization, design, path and so on and look for small or reasonable changes we can make here and there to improve any aspect of our journey and its direction that we can but at a gradual pace. Cleaning up ones home, adding aromatherapy, finding better music; literally anything under the sun that could help things in anyway.

For example, consider getting a peppermint plant that can both be scenic for one’s home and help raise energy levels while making the area more annoying for insects and spiders. The types of changes we can make to our journey are truly endless and can often challenge our imagination. As we grow, we’ll think of more and more things we can add to our toolkit.

Every wellness activity also shares in the magic of helping to make each other wellness activity more possible, more effective and by extension of positivity, every area in our lives more successful. It is not all powerful and fast. It’s gentle and slow but unyielding like a river. Which is also why it’s important to focus on our next inch towards wellness for that will always be possible no matter how much darkness we may face. As we’ll discuss in the chapter The Chasm.

It sounds silly, but darkness becomes dimmer and dimmer the more we take care of ourselves, loved ones and environments.

So go forth and improve thy journey!

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels