Community.timesfreepress.com | 40 Days to Personal Revolution

Saturday, March 21, 2009 , 8:18 p.m.

40 Days to Personal Revolution — Can two 40-days coexist?

By: Katy Mena

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Enjoying the last of the 40 Days with my fellow practitioners.

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Nobody really told me that the end would be the hardest part.

For 40 days I have turned my focus inward, plodding along on my path to Personal Revolution. Food has been itemized, meditation observed and yoga classes attended religiously. It was all working out according to plan in the beginning, my job and time with loved ones taking back-seat positions as I dedicated myself to, well, myself for 40 days. It was when the other 40 days began that things stared to get a little tricky.

As a Greek Orthodox Christian, I look forward to the Great Lenten Period with an unfettered sense of focus. Preparation for Easter, or Pascha, becomes the centerpiece of my life. In a way, it is a 40-day period similar to the one I have been observing as of late, one focused on fasting, prayer and the reverence of life. However, I have found it quite difficult to balance my spiritual schedules and have decided it simply can not been done — not equally, anyway.

Rushing out of church to make it to a yoga meeting didn’t seem right somehow, and it was then that I truly understood the message of those yoga lessons I had been cultivating.

My full attention is the greatest gift I can give to every thing, practice and person in my life.

Time spent thinking about other places I could be and other things I could be doing is time that is not being fully embraced.

Some things must be sacrificed to make way for others, and so it seems like the perfect time for my 40 Days to Personal Revolution program to draw to a close.

Sure, I may have still tried to squeeze everything in on the last day of the program, darting out of the closing party to make it to a Friday night service at my church. But I left feeling fully prepared to enjoy the last weeks of Lent with a renewed and present state of mind, gifting myself with a revitalized awareness to be treasured for the rest of my life.