Before reading this blog post, take 10 seconds to take a few deep breaths, be aware of your body here and create a moment of being present. Now, read over this poem twice before moving on.

Here is a poem by13thcentury Sufi Poet, Rumi,:

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want. Don’t go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across the door sill Where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open. Don’t go back to sleep.

Right now is an opportunity (which is really available to us at any moment) to recognize that we may be starting this moment off from a place of auto-pilot, falling into the same old habitual styles of thinking and behaving that we really want to change. This might mean engaging in habits that don’t serve our health and well-being (e.g., drinking/eating too much, isolating, too much TV, too much digital interaction) or with habitual ways of thinking (e.g., negative self talk).

Rumi reminds us that “the breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep.” This reminds us that right from the morning time, we can break out of our habitual tendencies and become present. We don’t need to fall back into the “same old, same old.”

What is it that you really want? Remind yourself of it and “don’t go back to sleep.”

However, Rumi notes how moments of awareness and choice are very subtle. We touch the ability to change, going “back and forth across the doorsill.”

He reminds us that the doorsill is there; it’s “round and open,” deep down we can feel it and may have even tasted it.

Sometimes it takes a reminder like this to put us into a space of awareness where we can see the doorsill, see the hope, to make a change. This momentary awareness of clarity and choice is The Now Effectin action.When we have the experience of making the change, this allows us to trust ourselves that we can indeed do it.

This burns into our short term memory and as we intentionally practice and repeat this it starts to become automatic. We’ll still cross back and forth across the doorsill from time to time, but over time, with practice, we’ll be more awake and cross over less and less.

Give yourself the gift of crossing the doorsill and don’t “going back to sleep.”

Please share your thoughts, stories, and questions below. Your interaction here provides a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.