Week 24 Challenge - Just Observing

This year I decided to challenge myself to reflect on various Yoga and Buddhist aspects throughout the year. The challenges come from a variety of places including readings in Deborah Adele's Yamas and Niyamas and Thich Nhat Hanh's Heart of the Buddha's Teaching and Happiness.

My challenge for this week was to just observe myself, to take the role of the witness. Observation without judgement.

This was a good challenge for me. It is easy for me to slip into one of 2 roles with myself. Either judge, jury and you know where that one goes. Or purposefully turned in the other direction, so that I don't have to observe.

It was (and still is) a challenge for me to observe in the moment. I do tend to unconsciously hit the "off" switch on observing and then do observations later, at the end of the day, in the safety and comfort of my room.

This week I worked at observing more in the moment. Just opening the door a bit and showing myself that there is nothing scary about observing. I'm not asking myself to change in the moment, simply to observe my actions and my feelings.

Yesterday I read a quote attributed to Stephen Batchelor: "I aspire to awaken, I appreciate its value, and I am convinced it is possible." When I read that quote, I was contemplating it in terms of enlightenment, as that is what the passage I was reading was about. However, as I write this, I realize that quote is very applicable for me in terms of awakening to the moment. Definitely more contemplation and practice on this one to come.