Sea of Tranquility

Today's was my first full morning yoga practice in a long time, and it felt great.

I still have the remnant of a torn-up shoulder from that fall I took last December, and if I don't get my complete morning stretch it just doesn't feel right.

Concentrated, controlled breathing, pranayama by name, requires more concentration than anything else in the practice, more even than meditation. It's nearly impossible to empty out the mind for more than a few seconds; when unoccupied it immediately seeks a thought, like a child afraid of his own reflection.

Afterward, with tranquil mind and relaxed body, I contemplate the history of our time, which is the last 250 years or so, compared with the time that preceded it -- the previous five thousand years. A historian of the French Ancien Régime I once read -- I forget who it was -- said that the government and culture of Louis XIV's France and ancient Egypt were more similar than the life of the Ancien Régime and that of France in 1890. Materially, we're much better off than our ancestors, better off than they ever even dreamed of being. In our family lives, our spiritual existence, our security or life's foundation...I'm not so sure -- can't really tell. Was there ever a generation before like ours, that didn't know from year to year what their lives were going to be like?

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