As you walk the path of your day, there are many things demanding your attention, many groups wanting your commitment, many places hoping to pull you away from your home.  Each one of them wants your promise that you will give yourself over to their cause, their creed, their life and in so doing giving up a little of yourself one drop at a time, fuel to their collective hunger. 

And yet you resist the temptation to give yourself over to these things, groups, places.  You save your role as Expert for just one thing.  In everything else, you are an Amateur.  To turn away from the noise and busyness of those demanding voices and grabbing hands and simply devote yourself to your own craft, that is the true art of the Expert.

You could count all the years, months, days you've been a teacher, listing all the lessons you've learned and doled out.  But that would only be your professional expertise.  Or you could explain how you work at your writing desk every day, courting words as your fingertips gently kissed your keyboard.  But these words are not just the click-clack of typing nor the splash of ink on paper; they are moments lived, felt, reflected upon.  You could go further still and unfurl the many years you've been a yogini (much longer than you've been a teacher) like you would your practice mat.  But that would only show you so many sun salutations and a few breathing exercises.

These pieces, all of them, only dance around the heart of your Expertise. They are the threads that make up the fabric of you, fibers that weave together to form your ever evolving mastery of just one thing: Listening. 

That ephemeral magic just beyond the border of too much noise and activity, too little inward reflection--and too little of what makes you smile.  It eludes the masses but waits patiently for those willing to cultivate its wisdom.  To listen is to tune out the white noise and become aware of the beating of your own heart, the rustle of fabric on skin as your chest rises and falls with each breath.  The whispering leaves above your head.  The hush of your surroundings.  The almost imperceptible voice inside you that grows in strength only when you tune out the world and tune into you.

That is Listening.  That is your magic, your well of inspiration.  And that is what you choose to be an Expert at--open ears and open heart.