{"id":590,"date":"2010-06-21T08:42:58","date_gmt":"2010-06-21T15:42:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/?p=590"},"modified":"2010-06-22T09:15:56","modified_gmt":"2010-06-22T16:15:56","slug":"still-and-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/?p=590","title":{"rendered":"Still and All"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dearest Readers,<\/p>\n<p>As I write this I am watching a little green lizard climb up a nearby  tree. I have been seeing a lot of these creatures skittling around the  ashram and they fill me with pleasure. We can learn stillness from the  lizard.<\/p>\n<p>Ah, stillness. Something so lovely and excruciating all at once. When  the body becomes still the mind wakes up. The mind gets busy thinking.  That&#8217;s why you&#8217;ll hear so many people say, &#8220;I can&#8217;t meditate.&#8221; \u00a0We think  to meditate means to have a quiet mind.<\/p>\n<p>Meditation, in fact, will reveal the activity of the mind thus giving us  the opportunity to practice letting it all go. When I arrived on the  ashram a few days ago I was pretty stimulated from 10 days of constant  activity. Sitting still in silence gave my mind the time to think about  everything that had happened. How to let go and be here now?<\/p>\n<p>Practice. It&#8217;s the only answer. Keep at it. Like people who say, &#8221; I  can&#8217;t do yoga because I&#8217;m not flexible&#8221; we need to be reminded that yoga  promotes flexibility. The more I give myself over to sitting still the  louder the mind will get but with time and willingness I will get better  at simply Being.<\/p>\n<p>The lizard is my guru!<br \/>\n<em><strong><br \/>\nInspiring Message of the Day:<\/strong><\/em> The nature of the mind is to think. When I  understand this I can give myself a break for having an over-active  melon. Meditation is a practice which teaches me to Be instead of to  think. I will give myself the gift of this practice today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dearest Readers, As I write this I am watching a little green lizard climb up a nearby tree. I have been seeing a lot of these creatures skittling around the ashram and they fill me with pleasure. We can learn stillness from the lizard. Ah, stillness. Something so lovely and excruciating all at once. When&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[384,816,325,389,391,390,388,372],"class_list":["post-590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ashram","tag-inspiration","tag-inspiring-message-of-the-day","tag-meditate","tag-meditation-practice","tag-pracatice","tag-stillness","tag-yoga"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=590"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":594,"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590\/revisions\/594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}