This post is coming after quite a while. So what have I been up to all this time? Weeeell, quite a bit or so I hope. I have been busy with my Master's dissertation which I handed in last week and am now starting preparations for my exams in May. Booooring! Right? Essential? Also right! ;)
I have been feeling the literary void too so I decided to be a little creative with my next email for YES!+, the NGO I volunteer for and the NGO that is creating waves around the world by empowering the youth with tools for their own good... :) I am one of them too and if you can't see it (I'd consider you crazy if you just said you can :P) just imagine me nodding my head vigorously in agreement to the last bit that says for their very own good. Sooo empowering. Well anyway, here's the email.
So I watched the Karate Kid yesterday for the first time. Besides the fact that it's my new (well not quite so new but still) favourite film, it is also a fact that Will Smith's son is cute and will become a brilliant actor one day. As for Jackie Chan.. whoa.. Before I get carried away and end up writing a film review, I think I'll get to the point.
I guess by now you all know my love for drawing up metaphors from day-to-day living, for YES!+ and for what we learn on it. So it came as no surprise when while watching the movie yesterday I realised something about the mind. No surprise.. ah ah ah.. but an eye-opening revelation.
Remember that scene, where the lady, in the monastery on the mountain, standing on the rocky edge is swaying with the snake and by harnessing her focus and energy is controlling the snake but our hero, "the little karate kid", thinks it's the other way around (duh! that the snake is controlling the lady!)?
I realised that this is also true for us. Our mind is like the snake and we live every day, every hour, every moment of our lives being a slave to it when it really should be the other way around. While the mind should be agile, alert and aware like the snake, we should be the ones controlling it, managing it and mastering it in every kind of situation, from stressful to emotional, from discouraging to exuberant.
And for those of you who have done the YES!+ (again, imagine me nodding my head vigorously) know that this doesn't need you to stand on the edge of a cliff and train a snake. It is actually no mean task and only a breath (well a couple of them) away.
So harness that power within, your breath, for a better state of mind and remember to do your Sudarshan Kriya. If you haven't done a YES!+ before find out how you can get on to a workshop.
Are you ready for the quote before I sign off? ;)
"The quality of our life depends on the quality of our mind."
What are you doing to take care of it? (I did the YES!+)
Much love,
Arsheen