What does Begin Again mean?

When I watch the trees unfurling (don’t you love that word?) in the first signs of Spring, their tiny leaves the color of that bright yellowish-green that Crayola has called Spring Green I feel a sense of wonder. This is also when I see the flowering trees burst into blossom.

It’s like the Earth is gently telling nature it is time to begin again. Winter is gone Spring has returned, and the spiral dance of the year is spinning around to start again.

These words I have also heard from meditation teachers – when you are concentrating and trying hard to meditate and to focus on your breath. You start getting distracted with all these thoughts bombarding your little brain with things you have not thought about in a long time.

You start batting them away to control them and cannot and lose focus. You think yourself a failure at meditation and fear you will never get it. Or you want to walk every day or have goals on your to-do list and don’t get it all done.

The meditation teacher reminds you to just begin again. This is what the practice is all about. The practice is realizing you are distracted and all that is needed is to just come back to the breath and begin again. I like that she (Sharon Salzburg) says it may happen thousands of times and that’s okay and you just begin again.

We have this thing that is part of being human and is very normal, where we get distracted and veer off our path and then beat ourselves up about it. We need to show compassion to ourselves and know we can just begin again. As long as we do this we are succeeding and caring about ourselves.

The Earth holds us and nature gently and as we should for ourselves. Whatever it is, we just need to begin again and unfurl our leaves and show our blossoms to the world and our spirit and know we are okay.

This life is a practice and when we falter, we just need to begin again.