Life is a puzzle

My family and I have been doing puzzles. We started when we were snowed in and we've completed several really big puzzles together. I set up a folding table in the living room for the puzzle we're working on. I dare you to walk past it and not try to find at least one piece. Then when you find one you get so excited that you decide to look for just one more. Before you know it.... you're hooked.

This current puzzle is impossible. All the pieces look exactly the same. As I was looking at the pieces trying to find just one piece that fits my mind started wandering. I was thinking about how impossible it is to look at one piece and know what the whole picture will look like. Sort of like life. It's impossible to know the whole picture of our lives by looking at just one piece. I think about this sometimes when I'm struggling to understand why things happen. Why we have to struggle so much. Why people have to suffer. I try to remember, when I'm struggling with a difficult situation, that we are looking at things from a very limited perspective. We aren't seeing the whole picture.

One of the benefits of working on these puzzles is practicing being one-pointed.
You can't work on it and get lost in your thoughts. I've been noticing just how scattered my mind has been over the last week. That could explain why I haven't been able to get the frame of the puzzle done. That's usually the easy part.

When I can't find a particular piece I think "Oh damn! there's something wrong with this puzzle, maybe a piece is missing!". That's never the case. The piece is always there I just need to focus my mind and I'll find the piece.

Sound familiar? In the midst of a struggle we think "Oh Damn! Something is wrong and I'll never figure out the solution. I don't know what to do!". That too is never the case. When we focus our mind with prayer or meditation the answers are always there.

There are messages and lessons for us all around. When are minds are clear we can see these messages. We can see the grace of Divine guidance that is always there. When we can't see it - It's still there. We just can't see the finished puzzle because all the pieces aren't together yet.

Day #3 - Gayatri mantra Sadhana
Observation: It was 9:30pm before I found time for sadhana but I did it. I don't usually meditate before bed as I find that it sometimes keeps me up. Anyway, I didn't have any trouble sleeping but I had some very vivid dreams. So vivid that today there were moments when I had to think twice about whether or not what I was thinking was the dream or real life. I find it interesting that the dream was still so vivid in my mind so many hours after waking. It's not the first time this has happened so I'm not sure it's a result of the mantra or just my crazy mind still racing even during sleep.