Be Here Now...And Then What?
There are few things more delicious than the experience of being fully present.
Can you recall how it feels in your body? Or maybe you’re fully present right now. What are the sense perceptions that arise?
For me, it’s usually a beautiful spaciousness that doesn’t deny any of the contractions that the events of life are eliciting in my body. A spaciousness that’s inclusive and welcoming of the tightness in my jaw, the twinge of pain in my lower back and sciatic life nerve.
Presence is a spaciousness that’s curious about the stories + meanings that my mind + body are believing as real and reacting to.
From here, I have choices.
Because I’m not identified with the contractions and stories, I can witness and feel them. I can be led to the darker caverns of my Being to see when these meanings became imprinted in my psyche + soma. Meanings that aren’t current any more.
Sometimes the act of witnessing alone has the power to bring them to present time. Other times, they require love and support; they need to be related to and held in compassionate understanding. They need to be reminded that they are valid, they matter, that they’re perfect just as they are.
Yesterday, up in the mountains (unfiltered)
Almost always, they resolve themselves without any controlling interference on my part to try and “fix” them - as long as I give them the space to be, allow their innate wisdom and intelligence to unwind the compressed emotions and administer the necessary medicine.
From presence, I’m able to listen, to move my body, to do and be still, to nourish myself in the way that I’m being asked to.
To lean into radically accepting my Self in stillness + doing, in rest + activity.
Like Nature, like the Earth, which we’re inseparable from.
From presence, I have the capacity to become aware of when I’m dominating myself, and when I’m stewarding myself, when I’m stewarding the current of Life that’s moving through me. I have the capacity to notice the sensational difference of each in my nervous system, which is inseparable from the Earth’s nervous system.
The felt-sense of intuition becomes a more intimate, playful companion as I learn to listen to it through my body and follow its guidance. And organically, I become better at recognizing when I’m mistaking one of my wounded parts as my intuition, and tend to that part instead of being led by it.
My intuition reminds me that there isn’t any perfection to attain because it’s already here now - and anything I do or make can be a celebration of that.
Perfection is liberated from the shackles of puritanical delusion.
Sacred + profane interpenetrate, seeing themselves in the other.
From pausing into presence, I have more access to my Self, more access to authentically knowing when it’s a yes or a no or an I don’t know.
And then presence vanishes. I’m lost once more in the divine play, the Lila. But my body and my breath are ever-loyal guides, bringing me back, back Home to my Self when I forget: the eternal return, which too is Lila.
I forget when I start projecting feelings I’m unwilling to relate to. Or when I internalize inauthentic meanings. My nervous system and my heartbeat alert me almost immediately. And the more I listen, the quicker I re-member.
My body which belongs to the Earth, my breath which belongs to the Sky and their alchemical union, creates the presence of my Being, the Home I always return to, the place from which all doing can arise, as expressions of appreciation for this strange and science-eluding Mystery, that I am also inseparable from.
Pause for a moment, be here now…and then what?
How does it feel for you? Where does it take you? Does it feel uncomfortable, perhaps even repellent?
If so, reclaim your capacity for presence, because therein lies your Self-regenerating power. And we can only work with power in the world responsibly when we’re connected to our own internal Source of it.
The Earth, whom you belong to, is waiting for you.
Join me this Sunday for nervous system regulation, releasing through somatic movement, flowing into Vedic Meditation practice in The Light Gets In on Sunday at 10am PST.