Getting to the Present Moment

There is no time like the present. Be here now. Stay present. What does it mean and what gets in the way.

The past gets in the way. I am having a great week and then an interaction at work triggers some anxiety. Almost literally, black clouds begin to obscure my vision. I lose clarity, and now I am living in the past. A distant memory of an interaction with my father takes over subconsciously, and I feel scared and vulnerable. And here comes that critical voice, scolding me for feeling what I feel. Can you relate?

Or the future. An unforeseen expense arises. Maybe another. Fear starts to creep in and the secure future that I saw for myself starts to crumble. Just beneath the surface of my awareness, I see a homeless person on the streets. My mind makes meaning out of this. This is my future. Suddenly, my financial life seems rocky. Damn. I’ve fallen behind in my work and those to do’s. I feel like a failure. And here come those voices again. Sound familiar?

What if this is really very predictable? The present is happening nicely and then the past or future somehow sneaks its way into our happy moment. What if this is really as bad as it gets? Paraphrasing Byron Katie, “All of those snakes on the trail were really just sticks once I got close enough to see them.”

Brian Swimme in “Cosmogenesis: An Unveiling of the Expanding Universe” writes, “We live in an intelligent universe. A universe that “knew” from the very beginning that life was coming.” He adds, and I am again paraphrasing, the universe knew that we humans were coming, beings that would figure out the math to actually understand the universe’s existence, how it all came into play. And, he adds, that we are part of the process. We are the universe evolving.

The ego is tricky. It doesn’t want us to know this, and yet it does. See. If we stay in survival mode, a.k.a. ruled by images of the past or future, we can relax and enjoy this incredible ride. But then, the ego has no role. It becomes terrified. We become terrified, so we find another reason, past or future, to get freaked out again. More snakes.

And so it goes. And so we go.

Except I, and we, have a way through into the present moment. And it works. It is The Work created by Byron Katie. Four steps into the present moment and conscious awareness of no snakes, only sticks.