The Good Old Days

Enjoy yourself. These are the good old days you're going to miss in the years ahead. – Anon

I found myself talking this week about the good old days and how much easier it was when I was young. I suddenly realized that I was showing my age. I remember my parents talking about the good old days. But as the above quote says enjoy this very moment because before you know it this moment will be a part of the good old days you reflect back upon.

For some of our children it is hard to believe that there was a time when cell phones and the internet did not exist. I can even remember party telephone lines. Our first phone was an eight party line. To make a call you waited until the line was free. Life was simpler then with information moving at a comfortable rate. Today it moves so fast few of us can keep up with the moment to moment changes.

But progress is an essential part of innovation and moving forward. So what seems so important today may be very inconsequential tomorrow. This is why yoga teaches us to embrace and enjoy the moment and at the same time freely let the moment slip away and make room for the next. Let life flow rather than resist change for change is inevitable.

Resistance is something that chases you all over the place. When we resist something we fight against it and the more we resist the harder it gets to set you free of the obsessive nature of resistance. One of the fundamental principle of yoga is to let go and learn to yield and flow with the moment. We are taught to embrace that which comes into our life and not to focus on that which we have not earned. Wisdom, which is the ultimate goal of yoga, comes about through experience, time, focus, and awareness.

Focusing on the past keeps us in that perpetual cycle of disconnection with the present moment. Awareness is the presence eliminates the past and future. At once you begin to experience timelessness. This is the essence of joy. It is a place (if there is a place) where time stops and your being simply becomes fully aware of its ultimate nature which is eternal.

The mystical path is to release you from looking back with regret or desire and to release yourself from looking forward with cravings and fear. The mystic seeks to find the moment free of all encumbrances so that the joy of enlightenment can be experienced. To live is to be present. Life happens and is often missed while we are busy, regretting, wishing, desiring, planning, and fearing. In the moment, the body becomes located and the mind becomes clear. We may look back fondly with memories of good times and wish we could recapture the feeling, the mood, the experience but it would never be the same because what is past can never be recreated as explicitly as the moment of the experience's birth. So rather than wish for the good old days, remember today will be tomorrow's good old day so embrace and enjoy each new moment of your life.

Doctor Lynn
www.doctorlynn.com