When I first began practicing yoga and meditation, I lived in a small bedroom at the back of my parent’s apartment in New York City.

The one small window opened onto the alley. Several mornings a week, at about 6 a.m., garbage trucks would back into the alley (beep…beep…beep). The men would empty the metal trash cans into the back of the truck (clang…smash…crash…grind).

In the early days of my practice, I kept wondering: when will all these distractions go away? The more I thought about this, the more anxious and agitated I became.

Meditation doesn’t stop garbage trucks from beeping or people from, as my guru suggested, “peopling.”

Life will do what it does, whether at full volume or a whisper. What makes a noise into a distraction isn’t the decibel. What turns sounds, sights, sensations, people, and events into distractions is how the mind relates to what arises.

Meditation gives you a new way of relating to what arises. A way that is open, direct, and clear. Noise becomes silence when met without commentary.

Here’s the key:

What does this suggest to you?

Share here or in the comments below.

~

~

~

Author: Eric Klein
Image: Author’s Own
Editor: Travis May
Copy Editor: Callie Rushton
Social Editor: Waylon Lewis