Eating your favourite ice-cream!

I love this analogy from Swami Govindananda and it always helps to be reminded, so thought I would share -

'When you eat your favourite ice-cream you become happy - why?  You think that the ice-cream is bringing you happiness.  You might have a second one and ok you are still happy.  You might have a 3rd helping and you start to feel bad.  So if it is the ice-cream bringing happiness why are you still not happy with the third one?  When you ate the first one you were completely focused on it, your mind was completely concentrated on one thought - that of the ice-cream.  By the third one the mind is wandering again and dissatisfaction occurs.  Like when it is cloudy, is the sun not shinning?  The sun is always shinning even at night, so the first one is like full sunshine, the second one the clouds are starting to come and by the third one the clouds have gathered - the mind has become cloudy.  Therefore how can it be that the ice-cream has brought you happiness?  It was not by any means the ice-cream but the one-pointedness of the mind whilst your mind held only one thought of that ice-cream.  The place where joy resides is in the self not in the ice-cream.'

The mind is nothing but thoughts, when we sit for meditation largely it is concentration that we are practicing, this is with effort.  When mediation occurs this is without effort, and it will come naturally when the time is right for you.  In concentration there is you and many thoughts with one thought in mind, you are trying to keep that one thought, in meditation there is you and you have merged with that one thought for the purpose of liberation.  But to reach that state we have to practice, practice and practice.  Yoga should be practiced everyday - you don't eat just once a week!

Have beautiful days full of practice!

Love and lightness of being 

Mangala / Nicky