The same boiling water which hardens the egg softens the potato

The same boiling water which hardens the egg softens the potato. It's not about the circumstance, but rather what you are made of.

- Roald Dahl

Fortunately for us, we are neither an egg nor a potato. As humans, we have the choice to respond to the boiling water in which we may find ourselves and choose to become either hardened or softened. 

At different stages of our life, the waters of life may be a temperate bath, where life feels smooth and we can operate fairly easily. At other times, it feels like the gas has been cranked up and the water has suddenly become unbearable, scorching. 

We may not be able to choose how high the gas is on, meaning, we can’t always choose our life circumstances (that’s our karma- a whole other discussion), but we can always choose how we interpret our circumstances and how we respond to them. 

We practice this in yoga nidra. Yoga nidra is an auditory practice. The body sleeps, and we listen to the instructions which guide the practice. At times, there may be environmental noises around us which we do not try to block out. We let the sounds be there without interpreting or attaching meaning to them. 

The sound of a jackhammer next door, is just a sound. 

The sound of an aeroplane overhead, is just a sound.

The sound of someone snoring next to you, is just a sound. 

When we attach meaning to the sounds, we attach emotion to them, and this influences our internal and external response to the noise. 

It is a normal reactive response to get annoyed when we hear irritating sounds, especially when they may trigger within us something deeper. For example, our neighbour jackhammering away may remind us of how rude they were last week, so the jackhammering feels like even more of an insult. 

Instead, if we can let things be as they are, and in this case, a sound being just a sound, we can choose to either harden or soften in the face of environmental irritants which, unfortunately, is inevitable in this life. This is where the practice of yoga and yoga nidra teach us to practice, in real time, to choose our response to life instead of reacting unconsciously.

The choice is always yours, do you let the circumstances of life harden or soften you?