IT’S A GIFT

Whenever something happens that feels wrong, whether it is a situation not going your way or you find you are dealing with difficult people, consider it a gift. I wrote about appreciation a few weeks ago. In this article let’s go deeper.

Here is one story:

In his book “A New Earth”, the spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle describes a situation that goes something like this: A man breaks a leg and has to go to hospital. His family and friends go to see him and say: “Oh, how unfortunate, how sad you are in hospital” and the man responds: “Is that so?”. While the man is in hospital there is a mud slide and his whole house disappears. His family and friends rush to the hospital and say to him: “Oh, how lucky, how fortunate you were in hospital!” and the man responds: “Is that so?”. And so it goes. One event following the other, and the man responding and not reacting. Every time a seemingly bad event turning out to be something good: A gift.

Here is another way of seeing it:

Imagine all events in your life, whether big or small, as pieces of a large puzzle. You only get to see one piece at the time. This means that it is hard to see the full picture. On their own the pieces of puzzle don’t make sense. However, put together as a whole, the final picture of the puzzle – your life – can be amazing. For this to happen, every single piece of the puzzle is important and every piece turns out to be a gift.

Trust

Trust life. Trust the universe. Know you are supported. Trust that as long as you give out goodness, goodness is reflected back to you. Respond rather than react, just like the man at the hospital. Miraculously, the way you choose to respond to a situation today has a direct effect on what happens for you in the future. As best you can avoid reacting in an unconscious way.

Did you know:

We can relate the idea of chain of events to yoga: In Vinyasa Yoga you move fluidly from one posture to another, with movement and breath happening together. For example, you go from child pose to all fours to downward facing dog and end up standing up. Vinyasa means “sequence of events”. If you are practising yoga you know how good and natural it feels when moving with ease from one posture to another! Let it be the same with life off the mat. Allow for this feeling of flow to take place. Your life can be a beautiful vinyasa where one event simply follows another. Train yourself to consider every event in your life a gift.

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Annette Wiik

My name is Annette. I am a Yoga Academy Certified Teacher (BWY-Accredited School) and started practising Hatha Yoga over 20 years ago. Holding a certificate from Bangor University to teach mindfulness-based courses, I incorporate my knowledge of mindfulness meditation in all my yoga classes. I have two grown-up children.