For me, Tree Pose, which comes about three-quarters of the way through my morning yoga routine, is the test.
Yes, I know there is no test. I know it's a matter of moving through each step of a particular pose in the way that's most fitting and helpful for my body that day, and not of achieving some perfect or even optimal form of posture according to some external or universal standard. So it's quite alright if every time I do Tree Pose it's different from the time before, and it doesn't matter whether it's nearer or further in form, from that wonderful pose silhouetted against the rising light of the sun in the image above.
And yes, I know that telling you Tree Pose is three-quarters of the way through my morning routine tells you how extremely simple, basic and fundamental my yoga is. So give me a break, folks.
The reason I call Tree Pose my test, is that it's the first standing-on-one-foot balance pose I attempt in my simple routine. So it's the first time in the routine with an objective standard of comparison with the day and the days before -- i.e. whether or not I fall over, or can maintain the pose in real serenity for some time.
And today, as on a few other occasions, I was surprised at how unusually well I managed to enter the Tree Pose and maintain it with easy breathing and real serenity, without tipping over or even having to guard against falling. (Like a tree in the forest, I hope, which no one will hear.)
Anyway, the surprise is that this time, as on other occasions when I experienced this ease, I was returning to my morning practice after having taken a few days off. I thought I'd be rusty. Unbalanced. Out of sync and awkward.
But it was exactly the opposite. As though having taken a bit of a break, not having worked at it day after day, I was free to return to it with a degree of ease and openness that disciplined diligence somehow did not allow, or got in the way of.
Like at a spiritual transformation group I attend weekly. I had to miss a couple of weeks because of ministry commitments. And when I returned, rather than feeling at some distance from the process and a little out of touch, when the meeting began with the bunch of us reading aloud the usual and familiar passages to gather and orient ourselves, I found that I was understanding the readings more deeply than I had before. Seeing things in them that I hadn't previously. Finding particular sentences and phrases full of meaning for myself and for my life that I had not understood or felt quite that way before.
Could it be that familiarity really does breed contempt -- even in spiritual matters and spiritual practices? And that absence makes the heart grow fonder -- or at least, more opened?
That when we do something -- like daily reading and prayer, weekly worship, giving our offering, helping with some mission or ministry project -- over and over without taking a break, that we somehow build a barrier or a callous or some kind of blindness to the deeper and deeper meaning of it?
And that when we return after time away -- for whatever reason -- we find ourselves drawn into an even deeper, more enriching experience of what it's all about, than we had before?
I'm hesitant, of course, to suggest everyone take a break from whatever spiritual practice you have. But the reality is, probably none of us is perfect anyway in what we do -- in attendance, commitment or practice.
And ... this may be the more important take-away ... when we're tempted to despair because we've been away or unengaged for a while, and we think there's no point is starting again, may be exactly the time it will mean the most to you to go back to it, and for it to mean more for you and make a bigger, more transformational difference in your life than it ever did before.
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