Live the life you have.

When I started my year in yoga, nearly 10 years ago, I couldn’t get enough.

Enough yoga.

Enough meditation.

Self-discovery.

Inquiry.

Visualization.

Cosmic connection.

Who am I?

And one practice led to another.

Mantra.

Mudra.

Trance dance.

Herbology.

Iridology.

Reiki.

Reflexology.

Other ologys.

I devoured it all like Sunday brunch.

Attempting to find me within Family.

And here it is, my discovery. I’m sure most of you will disagree. But you’ll find your own way.

There is no me in Family.

And that’s as it should be.

When it’s me, I have the Dharma of ME. I live the life of me.

But when me creates a family, I choose the Dharma of FAMILY. I live the life of family.

I stopped needing to seek. In fact, I really grew tired of it.

Not tired of connecting.

Not tired of sitting on my front step every morning in meditation and union.

These continue.

Time in Nature continues. Mindfulness and awareness continue.

But I lost the desire to run from teaching to teaching.

Practice to practice.

There was a time I would jump at any chance for a spiritual or learning retreat.

Who am I? What do I want? How can I serve?

Now that time is precious. Precious family time.

Perhaps enough stillness, enough silence allowed a voice to be heard.

Something in me said, “If you want to be chewing on a serious wad of regret in 10 years, keep going. Keep seeking spirituality and enlightenment. Because while you’re looking for it, you’re missing it. It’s right in front of you and all around you. It’s this life that you’ve spent your lifetime building.”

“It’s in your children and your husband and your community and family. It’s in your writing and your meals and your nature walks.”

And something inside me knew and confirmed this. That if all I did today was give my children my undivided attention after school and prepared a delicious and nourishing meal for the family (because these are important to me), then I’d have no regrets.

You either meditate in the cave or you raise your family. And what we do in between is called the householder yogi. We find the extraordinary in the ordinary. We delight in the moments of connection, awareness and presence in our life, regardless of the events of our life.

And the more I let go of seeking and allow myself to be completely present to my life, the less struggle I feel. There will be time for seeking. Time for deepened reflection (though I hope not, I’ve kind of had my fill of reflection, I’d prefer engagement in life). And perhaps that’s what soothes my soul right now: less jaw work and more paw work. Less thinking and more living.

There will be time to search the corners of my mind and compare them to the corners of the Universe.

But if I make this my goal now and for the coming years, I know myself; if I wake one day, having spent another 10 years immersed in self-discovery and cosmic revelations, wake to find my children grown and time on my hands, I will spend that time trying to resolve my regret.