This morning during the end of Sat Kriya, I had this notion about the subtle difference between reaching for excellence and pushing. I think we’re all taught that since life can be tough, we have to be tough with ourselves and push, push, push. Sometimes this can be helpful, maybe when it’ a really tough day and you have to push, like if your car were to break down and you’d have to get out and push it. Not comfortable, but necessary. Pushing, when you think about it is a more aggressive mindset. It also implies resistance and opposition. We push things that can’t move themselves, that have no ability to motivate themselves.
Reaching for excellence however, is a desire to go higher with whatever it is that you do. You’re reaching for a little better part of yourself than you expressed the last time. Reaching implies that you want to do what it is that you’re doing. Your psyche is behind it and you’re inspired. It may take some time to get started, but once you’re there you’re into it. You reach and you pull yourself up because you want to. Then you reach again. Each time going a little higher, being a little more excellent. Each day you get up to do whatever it is that you do, you should try to do it a little better than you did the last time. This is not without its challenges. Resistance is a problem of the mind that affects everyone.
It’s a subtle difference, this reaching versus pushing but it’s a good one to meditate on. Reaching is going for the inspiration and the victory of creating something excellent where as pushing can be a mundane getting through of the unpleasant things. Sometimes this is necessary as there can be some unpleasant things in life and they have to be gotten through. When we recognize the subtle difference between this, then we can choose to reach for excellence and push through when we have to. In This way we create a habit of reaching for excellence and when you do that you can get higher and higher until you’re in orbit. A satellite has to expend a lot of fuel to get into orbit, but once it’s there in the earth’s gravitational pull, it can just ride that gravity around the planet at great speeds with a little thrust to either side to stay on course.
Reaching for excellence creates a habit of being excellent. If you create the habit of being excellent, soon you won’t have to push yourself as much.
