stonetosser.com

Note to readers: My musings seem to be turning inward, perhaps as my travel schedule subsides for now. So don't be surprised if the spiritual and some armchair psychology begins to trump the travel on this blog for a while. Who said life journeys were consistent? I'm just following the path where it leads and exploring what is before me in order to move on.

"Be Here Now. Live in the Present. Live in the Moment." So goes common advice from the life coach, the therapist and the spiritual guide. There really isn't anywhere you can turn anymore without some enlightened someone urging you to put aside worries of tomorrow and yesterday in order to concentrate on making the precious moment in time you occupy RIGHT NOW full and completely experienced. The theory is that when your mind and heart are in the present moment – even the painful moment - you are not wasting energy on things you can't control. And by achieving emotional and psychic energy efficiency – mindful of the present at the expense of the past and the future - you will live a fulfilled and happy life.

Riiiiight.

Who are these people? Don’t’ they battle all the Past and Future Stress Monsters of the modern world? Don’t they struggle to pay down credit thrown at them in past times of economic "abundance" and which threatens their future? Aren't they distracted by anxiety over whether they’ll ever meet Mr./Ms. Right tomorrow or in another decade? Don’t they have children to worry about getting into college? Aren’t they anxious about our soldiers and how many more must die? Don’t they have illnesses or know people with horrible diseases eating them alive and who may never even have a future? Do they even live in the world or are they all just closet monks? Oh, please! This philosophy seems like it was developed on an ancient Buddhist mountaintop far removed from our modern reality.

Well, even though it’s very possible this philosophy was dreamed in some quiet temple - sans kids running around or cell phones ringing - through personal trial and error I have come to believe that Living in the Present is not only possible in the modern chaos of worries, but necessary.

My journey into the Present started many years ago. It wasn’t so much an event that awoke me as it was a realization that I had achieved everything I’d set out to achieve – a good career, a wonderful family, a nice house etc., but I wasn’t happy. There was always something ‘wrong,’ some problem, something keeping me from just enjoying a Moment in Time. It occurred to me that if all those achievements I’d sacrificed the Present Moment for all those years couldn’t make me happy, perhaps I wasn’t capable of happiness. And this idea scared the bejezzus out of me. I realized that if I didn't find a way to be happy in the Moment, I was going to lose the Moment entirely, and take my family down with me or drive them away.

The good news was that this scared me into starting my journey to wholeness; the bad news is that when I awoke to this new path, I found myself smack in the middle of the Forest of Emotional Instability, surround by EmoMonsters of many shapes and sizes. I didn’t realize it at the time, but Presence would become my best Monster defense and ultimately my way out of the Forest entirely.

One of my fairy godparents appeared in the guise of a corporate trainer who gave a room full of us Fortune 100 employees a ballpoint pen and a group exercise called “Be Here Now.” I would have dismissed the message completely (see above cynical rant) if it hadn't been for the gentle soul who delivered it. Learning more about how he struggled with "issues" in his life and yet still managed to pass on wisdom and peace to people he met on his journey made me look more seriously at his message of Presence.

And I’m so glad I did because a little farther into my quest I ran up against debilitating fears, doubts, worries and insecurities that attacked me like slatheringly ferocious beasts, all ganging up into one big Gigantic Monster sucking at my confidence and drive. Even though these frightening demons eventually turned out to be a large gang of annoying little gremlins and imps, in the middle of these beastly battles being Present in the Moment became my Monster Spray. On days when the Fear Demon tried to paralyze me with every imaginable concern for what had gone wrong in the past and might go wrong in the future, I found that if I sprayed myself with Presence - focusing on only those things that might go wrong in the Moment - I could focus enough to make sure the things that HAD to go right, did so. Covered in Presence I could function as a mom, wife and employee because I’d sapped energy from the Monster’s scariest weapon – overwhelming worries over things I couldn’t control.

But it turned out that Presence had only weakened the beasties, not gotten rid of them altogether. I still had to let them go. This was a bit confusing for me until I succumbed to the logic of my inability to “fix” them and simply gave them up. I let all the things I could not control go, handing them off to - other things.
    
Expunging the energy I was sending into worrying about the past, I wrote over 100 apology letters and angry rants (which I didn't send) just to purge those old wounds and gremlins out of me. Then I gave my worries about the future to God, angels, and myself in my future state. I gave the future back to the future, sending it forward in time and out of me.

With every letter-to-put-the-past-to-rest and every worry-i sent-forward, the DemonBeast before me shrank. Once I’d fully defused the Fear Demon’s past-and-future-worry-power, the stupid git had shrunk down to gremlin size and started kicking my shins. It was then I realized that by living in the Present Moment, unparalyzed by the weight of things that were inherently unmanageable, I could function better emotionally and take on the little bite-sized Gremlin Fears and Worry Imps one-by-one as they appeared as Present Problems. And so I emerged from the Forest of Emotional Instability and began my true journey to wholeness.

Today, I live a great life with plenty of things to worry about that I don't spend too much energy on. Living in the Present has made me happier and wholer and given me protection against the most terrifying of Demons, but it hasn't gotten rid of all of my problems. Life is full of Monsters and my job is to simply deal with them one at a time as they sneak up behind me, inside me and/or blocking my path. And Monsters or not, life is still an ongoing balance of the happiest of Moments and the saddest as well.

There’s more to this story, though. Having found my way out of the Forest of Emo-Monsters and armed with my new Monster Spray of Presence, I realize that learning to Be Here Now has actually changed me in some other – extremely fundamental ways. I’ll elaborate in my next post, but in some ways these other changes may have been more frightening to me than the Fear Demons that came lunging out of the dark. It occurs to me that the Worry Monsters may actually have been protecting me from what I feared the most, from the thing that Living in the Present transformed me into.

(to be continued...)