(Listen to the audio version below)
What would it mean to have a sunrise kind of life?
Maybe you’ve never heard these words – a sunrise kind of life – strung together like this before. But perhaps simply hearing them creates a welcome sensation in your body, one of softening or opening.
Or maybe it creates a sense of anxiety rooted in intrigue. What does it mean to have a sunrise kind of life? How am I supposed to apply this? Are you saying I need to wake up at sunrise?
Let me explain.
Sunrise in My 20s
I’ve been waking with the sun for many years. My practice predates my deep dive into yoga and the wisdom of brahmamuhurtha, the special time before 6:00 a.m. where spiritual practice is deepened. No, I’ve been an early riser since my restaurant days.
For many years in my 20s I pulled myself out of bed as early as 4:30 a.m. While all my friends were just tucking themselves in after a hard night drinking, I was rolling pie crust and squeezing orange juice.
Even then it suited me. The quiet. The solitude. The tension of the liminal state between sleep and awake.
I still get a thrill watching the sun rise. The sky turning from a cold, hard black to soft blue streaked with pinkish, orangish, purplish memories of the night. I’ve witnessed hundreds of sunrises and can say with authority that the same one never happens twice. Each morning is the most beautiful that has ever existed.
Seeing all parts of your experience like this is what I mean by a “sunrise kind of life.”
So Zen
A sunrise kind of life is what Zen Buddhism means by the concept of shoshin, or “beginner’s mind.” This idea embraces endless possibility, if only we become willing to see the freshness of each day, each person, each dip and blip of pain and pleasure.
It sounds simple (I mean, it’s Zen), but if it were easy, marriages would not fail, friends would not grow distant, and we would be able to embrace our suffering as easily as we embrace our joy. It’s simple, but the only easy part about beginner’s mind is forgetting to do it. Just like in the miserable heat of a summer day we easily forget that the sun did an extraordinary thing that morning. But turning again and again to the freshness, the beauty, the awesome act of seeing life without all the baggage – that is simple. And that is a sunrise kind of life.
Don’t Let It Go
Speaking of baggage, let’s consider how a sunrise kind of life is different from a phrase commonly used in spiritual circles: Let it go.
It sounds like this:
You just have to let it go.
Why can’t I let this go?
I don’t want to let it go.
How do I let it go?
It sounds like an awakened perspective, one that imagines us as sieves that just need a little high pressure water spray to get clean. But we’re not that.
What we are is a cumulation of our experiences. And every experience is valuable. Everything that happens shapes us and defines our edges. Yes, even those experiences that make us want to run, hide, fight, and scream.
So don’t try to let anything go. Instead, awaken yourself to the whole by seeking integration, not release.
Integration Is the New Letting Go
Integration is the truly awakened perspective. It is the sunrise kind of life – that slow, gradual turn from stars to sun that does not deny either one’s right to exist, only reflects it.
Each morning we are born again. Each morning the sun rises in a different way. And there is no such thing as a clean slate. We carry all that we had into the new day. If we choose to allow our minds to attach stories to memories that are already distorted the moment we recall them, what we carry can become baggage. But if we know how to use what we’ve been through, it becomes our fuel.
So, How?
We’ll move away from the poetic waxing now and into the land of, sure, but how does this look in real life?
It looks like acknowledging the ways your body has responded to life as perfect – as difficult as it is to see aging, illness, and decay, it is. (For inspiration, check out the Awake in The Nest on writing a love letter to your body)
It looks like realizing that your partner of many years is different than they were when you first met and being willing to meet them again.
It looks like looking for ways to prove your fixed mind wrong.
It looks like pausing and noticing how your senses are responding when the pace of change threatens to suck you under.
It looks like sending a tender, loving smile to the parts of you that have been ripped apart, stomped on, spit upon, and left to die (in other words, the experiences you want to let go.) It looks like gathering these up in your arms, pressing them to the piece of your heart that cannot be broken, and falling in love with the mess you never thought you wanted.
Rocket to the Sun
A sunrise kind of life is not rocket science, but it can be like learning a new language. Learning a language is notoriously hard for grown-ups, perhaps because we have forgotten how to learn playfully.
Playfulness in embracing the possibility available in each moment looks like gentle teasing, flirtation, and exhilarating games of hide-and-seek with all the concepts your mind thinks are rock solid. This invites a gentle awakening, like a bird’s song that coaxes a flower open at daybreak.
Playful spiritual growth does not demand immediate change or threaten to rip you unprepared from the shadow. This is a whistle from beyond the dark cave, inviting you to realize that the cracks of light that made it past the hard, grey stone were real, and not part of your imagination.
Not only are they real, but they will return tomorrow morning. And the next day, and the next day after that.
And that is the wisdom of a life spent waking up.
