I felt heartbroken today at the gym. Fulfilling my duty to the elliptical machine, watching Serena Williams lose her tennis match, dozens of half-motivated exercisers pushing metal. Push the rock up the hill, slide it down, push the rock up the hill again… that is how it’s done around here.
My eyes settle on two workout buddies—nobody I know, yet impossible to ignore. The only color in a grayscale room, visibly joyful together in the precision of each movement. Growing together, open and playful, smiling underneath their determined faces. I feel crushed in my solitary workout.
My lucid dream alarm goes off: “Am I dreaming?” I try to fly and can’t, everything around me seems obstinately real. “No, I think I’m awake. Awake in a dream of aloneness.” Tonight I will muster what motivation remains to energize my dream yoga practice. Writing this, I feel discouraged—on a rational level, I know my Happiness and Awakening lie in these practices, and yet a part of me feels lonely and distracted, tired of the uphill push of half-willed discipline.
Come back from the mountaintop
The valley is where snow-fed streams converge
The urge to melt, The fear to merge
Blissipline is a downhill process. The sun melts your heart at the top of each mountain you climb; and the next step is flow, not struggle. The crystalline streamlets of my sadness begin their journey toward green meadows where snow-fed streams converge. I too will experience blissipline, the joy of forward-flowing communion along the path. May this heart of sadness guide the way.
I had a lucid dream the night I posted this! There’s something about allowing the challenging feelings I sometimes feel to simply arise and be expressed that reinvigorates my practice. Thankfully, feelings of discouragement, frustration are simply information that can be worked with just like anything else.