For almost two years, I had the life-changing opportunity to live at two different yoga centers, meditating a lot and connecting to my inner Self. They were set in remote, natural beauty on top of mountains and surrounded by forests. The air was clear, silence was present, and life was simple though profound. I slept in little cabins, went to the bathroom in outhouses, and ate meals with community. I lived with all kinds of people throughout that time, with yoga being the common denominator. Each individual’s relationship with spirituality varied, but there was a common understanding and space given to explore and connect with it.

A friend of mine said centers like these can be spiritual incubators, nurturing this subtle process, especially when it’s fragile or new. For me, those two years were a protected, peaceful time for me, even as they were filled with internal challenges and extreme growth.

Now I look back on them fondly while staring at my computer screen inside my apartment in Los Angeles. The surroundings seem to contrast starkly, with this current one flaunting more concrete, noise, and bright lights than anything else. When I left the yoga center almost a year ago, it came from a feeling that it was right to go back into the world, even though I didn’t know why. I had thought the best way to be with God was at a remote meditation center surrounded by nature, but now that same God I’d learned to listen to inside myself was telling me to leave. I didn’t understand it; I just knew it was right. And the teachers around me I felt to be connected to Truth confirmed to me that same feeling.

So off I went into the big, bad world, as I’d thought of it, ready to learn the next lesson Life would bring. This one feels solidly about how to bring meditation into all aspects of life. My meditation practice is strong, and twice a day I can center into at least some semblance of peace. But daily life still throws me all across the sky. I lose that peace more often than I can find it again, and there’s a disconnect there still.

When I left the yoga center, they told me life is meditation. That meditation is not just sitting in silence coming back to the breath; it’s living throughout whatever the day brings and coming back to the breath. But damn it’s hard out here! In the middle of the city it seems like everything’s pulling me to get lost in it. All the colors and sounds and flashing lights everywhere fiercely grasp for my attention. Billboards pull me in as I drive to work, car radios blast from fast and expensive cars speeding around me, internet advertisements pop up blinking when I check my email, coworkers tell me about a huge number of events and activities happening throughout the city.

Everything promises me happiness, but none of it delivers. It either brings me into roller coaster rides of highs and lows or an overall dullness to compensate for the constant overstimulation. All the worldliness entices, and over time I notice my thoughts straying farther from breath, farther from spirit.

So I’m trying different things to help narrow the gap I still perceive between meditation and life, and this blog is one of them. Long-time meditators have told me that as I keep practicing, over time I will start to know deeply that life is spirituality too. I get that intellectually, but so far that has not sunk into my Being. I want to learn deeply that everything is God; this city, trans people, having a full-time office job, my life before I practiced yoga, everyone I meet wherever I go.

Yoga means different things to different people, but its literal translation is Union. May writing this blog, experiencing worldly life, and continuing to meditate throughout show me how life and spirituality unite. And may this writing be a point of connection between reader and writer; that we may learn together. Lokah samastah sukhino bhavantu (May all beings everywhere be happy and free).