Row Your Boat
The opening stanza of the English nursery rhyme serves as a musical mantra for life.
Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.
Life is not a race although we seem to be rushing to get somewhere. The purpose of a dance is not to get to the end of the song (unless you don’t like your dance partner), but to enjoy the flow of the movements.
There are a lot of mantras that seem more suited for living our daily life – “Seize The Day,” “Just Do It,” “Buy Low; Sell High” and “Show Me The Money” to name a few. They have their place but seem to come out of the Yang side of the energy equation. They keep the yielding, Yin energy buried in the dirt, but it is always there ready to sprout when provided with the light of day.
The stream of life is going to move at its pace – not yours. It will range from a canoe ride on placid pond to a white water rafting adventure. Seems like we get focused on what we have the least control over – making the river run faster or slower. It’s our ego’s attempt at being God.
The Buddhist proverb, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear” is the Yin energy at work as is the Chinese expression, “Wu Wei” which means do not force. The message is to let life come to you.
There are times when forcing the action works, but they are rare. We have the tendency to take those infrequent occasions and extrapolate them across our life and convince ourselves this is the only way. Action, as I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, is always in the present and it’s always best when it comes out of a state of presence – yielding to the gentle stream of Yin within.
When you marry your Yin with your Yang, you have actions that are born out of stillness. They aren’t manufactured actions that have us frenetically paddling upstream, but actions that are in the flow of life.
Enjoy the boat ride. Take in all the merriness it has to offer and stop trying to control the current. Take actions born from gentle stillness and let the dream come to you.
Sing the rhyme everyday and start right now on the First of May.
Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.
All the best,
John
http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan
http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301
Be Sociable, Share!
