Dear Friends,

Not too long ago I was having one of “those” days. (You know the kind I’m talking about? Well, I’ll tell you anyway.) I’m aware that a large part of a manager’s job description is simply to be interruptible, and usually I’m happy to switch gears whenever someone needs something from me. But once it a while it just goes a bit overboard.

In this particular case, it was about 3pm when I realized I had, for the first time that day, successfully completed one task from beginning to end without interruption. It involved moving a piece of paper from my desk to our bookkeeper’s, and it was on my second try. I rejoiced in what seemed at the time like a monumental victory.

It’s easy to get off-center on days like that. We can get so completely scattered that we can’t focus on anything properly. Alternatively, we might simply shut down and refuse to do anything. But it’s precisely these times that we most need to be fully present with the people and tasks in front of us. Not only because we have a job to do, but because so much spiritual progress is made simply by raising our energy level to meet life’s challenges as they come to us.

In the middle of that particular day, I had another, more surprising, interruption that brought me back to focus. I was talking on the phone with a fellow from a credit card processing company. It seemed like a pretty run-of-the-mill, managerial situation, and I wasn’t expecting anything out of the ordinary. At one point in the conversation, I was telling him a bit about our store and happened to mention meditation.

“Meditation!” he said excitedly. “My father-in-law keeps telling me I need to meditate! But I just can’t calm down. I try to sit still, and watch my breath, and clear my mind, but thoughts just keep filling my head! What can I do about it?”

Well, I’m not even sure if I had mentioned to him that I teach meditation, but luckily I do, and could give him some answers. And so we completely switched gears and had a mini meditation lesson over the phone. I explained that Nature abhors a vacuum, and so simply trying to blank your mind just opens it up to be refilled. I gave him a simple mantra to use instead, and explained how to connect it to the flow of his breath.

(Intrigued? Want more pointers? Check out our Beginning Meditation workshop on May 11.)

We only spent a few minutes in that alternate reality before we just as smoothly switched back and finished our original conversation. You could almost have convinced me it didn’t happen at all, just because the juxtaposition was so surreal. But when I hung up the phone I just had to laugh. A day that could have been miserable, had I let my frustration run away with me, turned out instead to give me a new entry for the “Reasons I Love My Job” file. It felt like God smiling down and saying “Sure you think it’s all just chaos sometimes, but I know what I’m doing!”

The other lesson here is that no moment is unimportant. If we’re willing to be channels for Light in this world, we can be so every minute of every day. That’s the attitude we try to embody here at East West, and I hope we can inspire it likewise in those with whom we share these moments.

Joy to you!

Brahmachari Tandava and Nooshin Zarkabir
Co-Managers