In Search Of The Present [Part 3]

 

Lesson 1 – Be Here, Now!

Though her life is hectic, Moriya tends to the connection to her soul daily, moment by moment, as she bounces email and faxes in cyber space for most of the same work-reasons we do. She tends to this connection while she edits manuscripts and theses for a select few professors in Jerusalem. She tends to this connection while neighbors drop in unexpectedly and through the incessant ring of the phone.

“Typing,” she says, “as a mechanical task equalizes the spiritual side in me.”

With peace and acceptance in her heart, Moriya deals with the rub of every day life in Jerusalem – a healer of this the world, but no longer quite in it.

She, herself, is convinced that her soul will keep her shielded from discomfort and unhappiness until the time of her death which, last time we talked about it, was expected to occur in her eighty-sixth year, twenty-two years from now.

v

Understanding the concept of being in the present, in the moment, in the present-moment, simply means being aware of ourselves within the endless string of random and boring little moments that connect our all major ones - the happy ones and the devastating ones - like the many small breaths that connect each of the *big ones*.

v

On the one hand, our *big-breath moments* are the sharp-edged moments we live for while, on the other, they are the gate-crashing moments against which we have absolutely no protection and no way of keeping out; the bad news, the dark moments, the metaphoric blows to the head, in their myriad of forms.

To put it another way, being aware *in the present* is what fits neatly within the space caught between two words: alert […] passivity.

v

 

I Need To Wake UP

Have I been sleeping?
I’ve been so still
Afraid of crumbling
Have I been careless?
Dismissing all the distant rumblings
Take me where I am supposed to be
To comprehend the things that I can’t see
Cause I need to move
I need to wake up
I need to change
I need to shake up
I need to speak out
Something’s got to break up
I’ve been asleep
And I need to wake up
Now [6]

Brisbane 25-10-2007

Being in the present moment simply means observing ourselves in the tiny little present that in truth is the ephemeral present. We are aware of it, but let’s not give it a name. Let’s not qualify it or our response to it.

The present moment that links breath-to-heart only needs to be made tangible and quantified – acknowledged, but not judged.

It does not need to be labelled in any way, for the minute we slap a label on that tiny, bubble-thin moment, the minute we give it a rating, that moment is

already of the past and we have missed *being* in it.

v

I have read it in enough books to accept that being in the present simply means

shutting out the monkey-chatter, the relentless flow of random thoughts that are not part of any problem solving process – it is about shutting down thoughts that invade our brain the minute we stop talking.

v

Actually, I will even go as far as to suggest that most of our talking – en masse, as a society – has evolved as sabotage against being present in the moment and in favor of robotic responses to our buttons being pushed.

“We always think our negative emotions are produced by the fault of other people or by the fault of circumstances. We always think that. Our negative emotions are in ourselves and are produced by ourselves. There is absolutely not a single unavoidable reason why somebody else’s action or circumstance should produce a negative reaction in me. It is only my weakness.[sic] No negative emotion can be produced by external causes if we do not want it. We have negative emotions because we permit them, justify them, explain them by external causes, and in this way, we do not struggle with them. “ [7]

v

“Here is a little story that could have been found in the back pages in The Jerusalem Post,” said Moriya in her usual light-hearted manner. “There had been an accident on the highway during peak hour traffic and a lot of cars were stopped bumper-to-bumper. People left their vehicles to have a look along with others who came out of nowhere to get closer to the action, as people like to do.

The scene of the accident was very crowded. A journalist who happened to be there tried to get closer himself, but couldn't because of all the people rubbernecking. So, he thought about it for a while, and finally he came up with a brilliant idea. He started to push his way through the crowd shouting, "Let me get through! Let me pass! I am the son of the victim! It is my father out there!" Immediately the people parted to let him through. Once the journalist, camera held above his head, reached the scene of the accident, he saw that the victim of the collision was a donkey!”

v

Films are popular mostly because however improbable the plot, the characters supposedly react as we would.

The next time you are settled in front of your screen, observe the characters as they go about their business, supposedly our daily business, and decide how much thought goes into any of their decisions.

Have their buttons been pushed and they react on impulse, even if embarked on a course of action after a quick tete-a-tete with their brain?

All things equal, how would your actions/reactions be any different?

v

Are these characters doing a knee-jerk tit-for-tit or tit-for-tat or are they present in the moment, energetically contained, operating from a balanced view of themselves?

v

Being in the moment simply means that once we have quietened our mind, we only need to focus on whatever it is we are doing at any specific moment – the moment under our feet.

When I first learnt to rollerblade, I can guarantee that from the moment I would get up on my blades to the moment I unlaced them, I was totally *in the present*. Ninety-nine percent of the time. No other way but. The second I would take my mind off the stride, I would invariably end up on my bum.

Whoever remembers the absolute focus that seized our brain while on our first driving lessons knows what it means to be present in the moment.

Oppose the novice’s alert awareness to the zoning out that usually overpowers experienced drivers when we cruise on the highway, or even in our back streets. Compare it to the blanking out that takes over as we scan supermarket aisles – which may well be the same zoning out that overpowers us as we lift food to mouth over breakfast. It may well be the same as the blanks we bring home, even after a sedate get-together with friends when we only remember some snippets of the conversations and the general look, perhaps taste, of the food we ate, but we can’t remember what the person facing us was wearing or what else was going on around us – provided no one created a scene.

v

Being in the moment can even be made fun as we look at EVERYTHING the way a tracking ranger would observe every branch, twig, scrape in the dirt and inspect every animal dropping to get meaning out of the scene in front of her. Except that, ideally, being in the present moment means that the looking and the analyzing are done through our soul’s eyes, not our 21st century brain. In this lies the challenge that karma presents to each one of us – the line in the sand that not many wish to cross.

v

Being present, in the moment, simply means understanding that whatever we are doing - want to do, or feel we ought to do - might have to be put on hold or even postponed indefinitely.

Such is the cosmic wisdom in which we need to trust since we, little blind mice that we are, have no idea of the fine mesh that settles invisibly around us until it holds us in its snare of spiritual lethargy.

v

Below an abstract drawing of what can only be that of a bloated frog, bearing a slight resemblance to Jabba the Hutt, is a thought left dangling by Alan Watts: “If you think by sitting you can become a buddha …” [8]

v

OK, so I understand the theory, but I find the practical application, the day-to-day application of the theory very, very frustrating. Shouldn’t being aware of ourselves within our present be as natural as breathing?

For me, it is as easy as breathing under water.

v

If I attempt a rating of the inner contentment I feel, I can only rate it a puny 5 out of 10. And that is because the amorphous lump of anxiety that sits heavily in the area of my solar plexus acts like a lead apron that smothers even my relatively carefree moments.

It is the price I pay, very much unwillingly, for not recognizing the unique newness and freshness of each moment as it presents itself.

The more I think of this, the more I understand that each one is, in fact, as fresh as the proverbial morning dew.

However, I can categorically say that some moments have an imprint that

seems very familiar. They look and feel and just about taste like ones that have already been played – over and over.

These moment bring on an “uh-uh! Here we go again” gut reaction.

v

Like the ocean, our ego-persona appears to be smooth enough on the surface. It absorbs. It hides what churns below. It deals - up to a certain point. But our

ego-persona has great limitations. Unlike the ocean, it is never renewed. It only relies on past memories. The past is static and memory is fallible.

v

Reality check#1: no such string of seconds, strung one after the other, has ever presented itself to me in the past.

Not as it presents itself to me now.

Not as it will present itself tomorrow.

The irony of it is that I respond to most *new* moments within each *new* day through the jumbled and sticky mesh of past experiences.

Put simply, I deal with today-moments as I dealt with yesterday-moments.

I taint them with the same energy spikes.

How comforting is it to me knowing that I am not alone in doing this?

v

Resolution: “Let’s not drink Today out of yesterday’s mug,” dixit C.C.

v

Being present in the moment means that I cannot let writing absorb all of my time and all of my thoughts.

As I type this text, there is a workman on our patio. He is adjusting the slant of our gutters. I am standing by to hear his call through the screen door, as he will want to explain this and that about the state of the rusted guttering and how he proposes to repair it.

Should his call catch me in mid-sentence at the keyboard, I will hit ‘save’ and I will get up.

It will be my cue to practice stilling my mind long enough to listen to what this workman wants to tell me and be in the fresh moment that has just presented itself to me.

If Moriya were here, she would know how to decode this man’s *chitchat* about my gutters to give me a string of messages of symbolic spiritual relevance - such is another of her gifts.

“Hello?” A man’s voice calls out from the patio. “Are you there?”

Oops, quickly hit ‘save’. Prac time!

© by C.C. Saint-Clair, 2008

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6. Melissa Etheridge, “I Need TO Wake Up”, The Road Less Traveled, 2007.

7. P.D Ouspensky, (1957), The Fourth Way, Random House, New York, p.71.

8. A. Watts, op.cit., cover page

 

 

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Donkey Riding [145-148] (117-120) - *with capstan demonstration*

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