Opening to Attention

I’ve been working on building a website for my mom. She is going to pay me upon completion for a fully functioning website. For her it’s a good deal because we can work closely together and because I’m much cheaper than a professional web designer. For me it’s a great deal because it lets me get my foot into the web design world.

But, it’s definitely a challenge. It’s complicated stuff and I have so much to learn. My goal has been to work on the website every day.

Anyways, a few days ago I was stumped. I couldn’t figure out how to do something. I’d been ramming my head against the problem for an hour or so and was getting pretty frustrated. Finally, I gave up on it. I moved on to other work.

The next day I went back to the problem. I hadn’t consciously thought about it in the interim, however, when I sat down to work on the problem it seemed quite obvious. It was resolved within minutes.

The subtle attention that my mind had given the problem had opened new doorways of understanding. Stepping back from the problem had allowed my mind to figure out new ways of understanding. It had opened up previously unexplored pathways.

So, this isn’t really the most profound insight in the world, however, it’s something I keep trying to remember. Personally I can get so caught up in instantaneous results. I want something to get done. I want to make clearly measurable progress. But, that isn’t always the way it’s going to happen. Sometimes the best thing that you can do is take a step back and just breath. Just see what arises in you.

In Anusara Yoga there are five key principles of alignment. They are applied sequentially in every pose. The very first one is “Open to Grace.” This can mean many things, however, one way of interpreting it that works for me is this ability to step back and allow things to arise. If you are shut down to the possibility of something good arising obviously nothing will. SO the first step, in a yoga pose or in anything really, is to open up and see what happens.

Pretty neat. So, I’m going to go now and let things arise.