I spent the first part of this week after Swami Muktibhodananda’s workshop in blissful peace. The same kind of peace experienced after a week’s retreat in mediation.
Now, it has started to fade. And I crave that bliss again.
This week (and the last) the demands on my time outside of my usual job have been greater. I should be honest and state here that I have a second job teaching group fitness and yoga classes at the local YMCA. This might seem straightforward, but the corollary of this is that for every hour I teach, I spend another preparing and practicing. We also had a Y staff meeting on Tuesday evening.
My sleep has been interrupted. If I am awoken from 3am onwards, my brain switches on and I start planning and thinking. It’s very hard to go back to sleep.
On Monday night, we had a frog in the ensuite toilet, croaking its delight at the recent rain we’ve had. This isn’t new. Frogs live in our toilet cistern and we regularly evict them. On Tuesday night, we had a hoon (an idiot in a car) doing a burnout right outside of our bed room window.
Also, my partner, who usually spends at least two nights at Kings Canyon, has been home this week. Here, it’s the peace of waking up and meditating selfishly, not having someone looking over your shoulder if you’re surfing the net on the laptop in bed and just the simple demands of reciprocating in a relationship that’s annoying me.
Quite simply, I want to be alone to study, to meditate, think and practice.
Yet I can’t.
So I’ve been a little more snappy the past few days than I have been previously. Like this morning. Gary (partner) and Ben (son) making noise when I was concentrating on downloading maps into my new GPS. I had to tell them both to shut up. Gary then made a comment about the podcast I’d downloaded: Does the Web have a Buddha Nature?
Hours later, I’m still irritated by these things. I just want some time for myself to rest in the bliss I experienced on the weekend.
But I guess that craving even bliss itself is one of the things that yogis and Buddhists are supposed to be eliminating.
Ahh… All is practice.
I was hoping to put some quotes from the Yoga Sutra and Buddhist scriptures here (like cessations about craving and eliminate the even the method), but I’m really tired, very busy and can’t be bothered!
GRRR!!
AnthroYogini 
I know how you feel…last winter I went on my first week-long yoga retreat, came back from it feeling like my life had changed in ways I was only beginning to discover. Though I knew from past experience coming back from weekend workshops that I was due for somewhat of a hangover, I wasn’t expecting the crash into deep depression that followed a month later. Of course I realize, on one level, that it’s all part of the path…or, as you say, all is practice…the crashing down to earth as much as the flying, but that sure doesn’t mean it’s easy….