What I learned by dancing through the night

I lived nearly two decades in a spiritual community in the UK and we were always short of cash. To make money, we would put on festivals, workshops, meditation camps, this kind of thing. I remember, at one time, taking on the task of running these all-night dance sessions. You start dancing in the evening and you keep going until the sun comes up. 

One time, I was explaining the concept to a group of visitors and one person asked me “But how do you keep dancing all through the night?” 

I thought for a moment and then found myself saying, “It's easy. You start dancing around 8pm. And then every time that a thought comes up that you want to stop now, you ignore it, and just carry on dancing. Eventually, the sun comes up.”

I often reflect on this notion. Our minds can make things insanely complex. But very often, where our development is concerned, we don’t make progress because at some point we had this thought that it's enough now, and we just followed it.  

If you want to achieve stuff in life you will have to ignore some of these “it's enough now” thoughts. A lot of the time, that's actually all that there is to it.

You just find a way to keep going.