THOUGHTS : TASSAJARA
I am 3 weeks away from beginning my journey at Tassajara and the timing couldn’t be better because I am in need of some quiet time. My stomach has been off for the last week and I haven’t been able to figure it out. My first thought was it was something I was eating so I cut out dairy, gluten and anything processed for a few days. When that didn’t help, I resorted to complaining about my stomach to anyone who would listen. My mom had the pleasure of hearing about it Monday night. I was going on and on when she sweetly cut me off and said “Do you think maybe it’s anxiety? You do have quite a lot going on?”
She was right, my mind has been going a mile a minute and I haven’t taken a moment to stop and take it all in. Nothing bad is happening, the opposite really, things are good. But still I have felt jumpy. So, I dragged my anxious ass to a much-needed yoga class last night and let myself off the hook from being General Manager of the Universe, at least for a day!
I was reading a Pema Chodron book when I got home and came across the excerpt below. I thought I would share it with you all because I think it’s rather profound…
Underneath our ordinary lives, underneath all the talking we do, all the moving we do, all the thoughts in our minds, there’s a fundamental groundlessness. It’s there bubbling along all the time. We experience it as restlessness and edginess. We experience it as fear. It motivates passion, aggression, ignorance, jealousy, and pride, but we never get down to the essence of it.
Refraining is the method for getting to know the nature of this restlessness and fear. It’s a method for settling into groundlessness. If we immediately entertain ourselves by talking, by acting, by thinking- if there’s never any pause- we will never be able to relax. We will be speeding through our lives. We’ll always be stuck with my grandfather called a good case of the jitters.
It’s a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately filling up the space.
©
365til30.com 
This is so beautiful– I feel quieter after just reading that passage and now am going to look up books by Pema Chodron. Thank you!!