It is always best to rassle yourself out of bed first thing, stumble your way to your cushion and sit with an upright spine. Begin in the half hour before sun up, when the air is moist with the night’s dewy cover and the skylight is a pearly hue. The dawn is the time favored by the yogis, the liminal space before the clang and bustle of the day. Without clench or clamp be still. Take company with the slow rise of the sun. See that your brain and all your fine nerve endings awaken in the time-honored way. Like a lifted blind, let the ever widening horizon be revealed. Learn the art of slowing—just you and the wind and the chatter of the finches in the shrubbery.
Enter the exquisite space of no-thought and no-strategy. It is then that every single thing—the murmur of blood in your veins, the wayward call of the wood pigeon, the rumble of a distant train, insects, aviation, the ping of appliances, the bark of the dog, random conversation—all bleed together into a single pulse, a unified arising in the quantum of the now. “On the field of dharma,” goes the very first line of the Bhagavad Gita. It is upon this field that the day emerges. In sitting, learn the art of allowing. Let all things come into being instantaneously and then drop away to stillness. When the blush of first light enters the cupula at the crown of your head, it will travel in a steady stream down your spine.
Let the break of dawn work like an elixir, bathing your flesh, clearing your bones, polishing your nerves. Then you can stand ready, held wide open, the light of awareness radiating within.
