The art of being exactly where we are
Being where we are. We've all heard that "being where we are" is where we need to be. But do you see the joke in that? Here we are, trying to get somewhere again!!
Being here fully gets translated by mind into a being something to work towards. Somewhere new to get to at some point in the future after lots of hard work, discipline and time, lots of time! Are you laughing yet? It's funny, and it makes us feel crazy, but its really just mind doing what minds do. That's all. Mind is so good at figuring out how to do things, and its just trying to do this too, but it can't. As soon as we realize it can't, we are free to just smile at its efforts and relax. All is well. Mind is doing its thing and it doesn't matter. No need to pay overmuch attention to it.
Meanwhile Here we Are! Here we are in this moment with whatever is going on inwardly and outwardly. There is nowhere else we could ever have possibly been except as we allow ourselves to listen overmuch to the stream of thinking. Our minds may be saying to us right at this moment that "this can't be it" because this moment is totally mundane, empty, boring, painful or... (fill in the blank for yourself). Mind can always come up with reasons why this particular moment can't be what is being referred to, because it can't find anything special there. Nothing. (Are you laughing yet?)
Meanwhile, smiling and relaxing we fall into a reality that mind doesn't even notice. Its kind of like falling asleep at night--we have to relax for it to happen.
Our thinking minds have everything boxed and labeled and categorized according to past knowledge, and our own structure of understanding whatever is encountered. And those capabilities are so very useful to us for practical things. But what the logical left-brain thought-stream doesn't even notice is anything that is outside of its structures for understanding the world--and that very definitely includes Reality with a capital R. Not because thought is wrong or bad, but because it is constrained within self-constructed bounds and can't see beyond that. It is blind to whatever doesn't fit its own structures (at least not until those structures are broadened enormously). So for now it tries to shrink everything to make it fit its constructs. But in contemplating what is really going on in life, thought has run into something much bigger than its constructs, something that contains mind and everything else within it. It has come to the edge of its ability to be helpful and will, when its good and ready, relax and allow us to fall into this new territory. To fall awake.
When we run into a fabulous sunset or an unusually beautiful flower, our mind's processes of naming it, talking about it, and so on, can detract from our seeing and appreciating it fully. It is the same with the present moment. Relaxing into being exactly where we are, we begin to notice what is here (including thinking and a LOT else), and that this has been here all along. Its just like a new door of perception has opened. We now see where we were blind before.
We stand in a new territory beyond the previously held paradigm that our mind provided us, telling us how life worked, who was to blame, and so on. We have reconnected with something familiar, something we never really left. Something that we have, over all the years we thought we were separate, never left for a second.
As we look around we begin to see how it all is working. Now everything that is happening, even including our own seemingly idiotic or unenlightened episodes are perfect setups for continued awakening into a fuller and fuller embrace of being this that we truly are. Slowly we relax our incessant argument with life, and trust our circumstances, even our thoughts and feelings, as being perfect as they are, even as they flow and change. We offer ourselves, including our thinking minds and their amazing capabilities in service to this perfect alive presence we now can see and that is also who we are.
-Alice Gardner, Wide Awake Living Newsletter
www.wideawakeliving.com
Being here fully gets translated by mind into a being something to work towards. Somewhere new to get to at some point in the future after lots of hard work, discipline and time, lots of time! Are you laughing yet? It's funny, and it makes us feel crazy, but its really just mind doing what minds do. That's all. Mind is so good at figuring out how to do things, and its just trying to do this too, but it can't. As soon as we realize it can't, we are free to just smile at its efforts and relax. All is well. Mind is doing its thing and it doesn't matter. No need to pay overmuch attention to it.
Meanwhile Here we Are! Here we are in this moment with whatever is going on inwardly and outwardly. There is nowhere else we could ever have possibly been except as we allow ourselves to listen overmuch to the stream of thinking. Our minds may be saying to us right at this moment that "this can't be it" because this moment is totally mundane, empty, boring, painful or... (fill in the blank for yourself). Mind can always come up with reasons why this particular moment can't be what is being referred to, because it can't find anything special there. Nothing. (Are you laughing yet?)
Meanwhile, smiling and relaxing we fall into a reality that mind doesn't even notice. Its kind of like falling asleep at night--we have to relax for it to happen.
Our thinking minds have everything boxed and labeled and categorized according to past knowledge, and our own structure of understanding whatever is encountered. And those capabilities are so very useful to us for practical things. But what the logical left-brain thought-stream doesn't even notice is anything that is outside of its structures for understanding the world--and that very definitely includes Reality with a capital R. Not because thought is wrong or bad, but because it is constrained within self-constructed bounds and can't see beyond that. It is blind to whatever doesn't fit its own structures (at least not until those structures are broadened enormously). So for now it tries to shrink everything to make it fit its constructs. But in contemplating what is really going on in life, thought has run into something much bigger than its constructs, something that contains mind and everything else within it. It has come to the edge of its ability to be helpful and will, when its good and ready, relax and allow us to fall into this new territory. To fall awake.
When we run into a fabulous sunset or an unusually beautiful flower, our mind's processes of naming it, talking about it, and so on, can detract from our seeing and appreciating it fully. It is the same with the present moment. Relaxing into being exactly where we are, we begin to notice what is here (including thinking and a LOT else), and that this has been here all along. Its just like a new door of perception has opened. We now see where we were blind before.
We stand in a new territory beyond the previously held paradigm that our mind provided us, telling us how life worked, who was to blame, and so on. We have reconnected with something familiar, something we never really left. Something that we have, over all the years we thought we were separate, never left for a second.
As we look around we begin to see how it all is working. Now everything that is happening, even including our own seemingly idiotic or unenlightened episodes are perfect setups for continued awakening into a fuller and fuller embrace of being this that we truly are. Slowly we relax our incessant argument with life, and trust our circumstances, even our thoughts and feelings, as being perfect as they are, even as they flow and change. We offer ourselves, including our thinking minds and their amazing capabilities in service to this perfect alive presence we now can see and that is also who we are.
-Alice Gardner, Wide Awake Living Newsletter
www.wideawakeliving.com
