Imagine yourself to be a large rock in the middle of a river, water flowing all around you. Waves will come, they will get you wet and they will pass on by.

The rock cannot avoid a wave, it cannot attract a wave, it cannot hold on to a wave. Waves will come, they will get the rock wet and they will flow on by.

It seems futile to imagine that the rock would treat each wits, trying to respond differently to each one. Why love one wave and hate another?

Instead the rock sees all waves as just one thing; the whole river. Water, and nothing else. And in doing so it maintains perfect equanimity regardless of circumstance.

Now imagine yourself again to be that rock, seeing each person in your life, each circumstance, each feeling and thought to be nothing more than waves in the great River of Life. See and feel yourself in a state of openness to the flow of water itself rather than individual waves. Allow the water of experience to come, to get you wet and to wash you clean of the things you no longer need to hold onto.

Each and every experience, idea and thing is nothing more than energy vibrating at different frequencies. Various forms of that one consciousness that creates, supports and lives as Life itself. In knowing this we are able to respond to all things as this flow of energy and consciousness, maintaining our inner peace as we navigate through life, impervious to the storms and droughts that may come.

As the old yogic saying goes, let the mind be like a flame in a lamp, steady, unwavering, protected from the winds that blow all around it.