Today’s Sivananda quote (Sivananda's Message of the Day for Wednesday, April 6, 2011) reads: Meditate. Go down into the chambers of your heart. Go down deep, deep. Realise Divinity. —Sri Swami Sivananda

I don't spend nearly enough time in meditation and, being that I am a Yoga teacher, carry a fair amount of guilt over this. I think one of the reasons I don't sit in meditation is that I feel guilty and am avoiding facing God. I don’t feel like I am doing enough with my life. I know I waste time; I know I sin, that I am not living up to my full potential (for whatever reasons), and that there are a multitude of things I could do better than I do. At some deeply personal level I believe that if I were a better person, I would do more—that if I did more, I would be a better person. These failings feel like I am failing God. I am goofing off: I have not done enough.

At times it seems ridiculous to me when I hear myself think this way—but not always (maybe not often enough). At the same time, without going into details, my life is a bit of a mess. Without getting caught up in psycho-babble, I know enough about psychology to know that these two things can be related: i.e., the person who wants to save the world can’t get out of bed, brush his teeth, get a job. It is a brain dysfunction surely traceable to unresolved childhood issues of wanting to save my family, save my dad, save my brother. That doesn’t change or help or abate that there is a very real essence of who I am that believes if I could just get things right—do what and all that I should be doing, this would help to fix all that is amiss in the world as well. Consequently, when things in the world are really fucked up, my problems aside, I feel that I shoulder some responsibility—that if I did more, not just I would be better, we all would be.