Living Always Now…


being-present-1024x433Feel, savor, enjoy, embrace the moment that is now

Take on, overcome, fight, challenge the time that is now

Find God, your answers, your help, your deliverance, now

Live always your life now…

It is remarkable how much energy we squander reliving past moments and future times. When our recall is pleasant or our anticipation sweet, our time travel enhances our journey. But when with squinted eye we lament the past or rashly dread an imaginary future, we sully and tarnish our journey and cut ourselves off from the experience of life that is now.

Just as your mind was designed to think one thought at a time, no matter the speed, and always in succession, your experience of life was intended to occupy all the space of right now. The incredible sensory beauty of nature is to be both perceived and received now. The love of people and your relationship to them is to be performed and reformed now. The solution to your trouble, your difficulty, your toil can only be discovered and then rediscovered now. Your life is now. Your feelings are now. Your understanding is now. Your experience is now. Your decision is now. Your God (and mine) is now.

Our senses have become so easily distracted, so anesthetized, so diluted that we fail to register what we need to detect. We miss it. We look asconce. We harden our hearts. We blow past it recklessly and without thought. We never impressed on our minds what “it” is and why we need to address its beckoning. Instead we dart beyond it, nervously anticipating or retreating from its threatening, all the while never slowing enough to see it for what it is. Feelings of boredom or lethargy frighten us and in escape from them we fill the air around us with media or music or talking or booze or anything that will succeed in removing the threat. However, the specter is not removed just postponed. Then each postponed moment adds, multiplies and carries over until the life of the person is eventually lost.

A bad marriage isn’t one thing it’s a compilation of things. It’s a hundred unsaid sentences; a thousand unspoken thoughts, a million feelings unaddressed. The job you loathe became so by your own diminished effort, your silent acquiescence, your failure to shine and effervesce and move upward and onward. Your lack of money or respect or fulfillment came not because someone wrestled it from you, but because you gave it up in thought or in practice, or better said in failure to think and then act. You arrived at where you arrived at not by a sudden bolt or surge or happenstance, not by commission, but by omission. All that futile dragging about and wallowing in some long dead past moment or anxiously rehearsing some ghastly, dreadful, or shame producing future time succeeded in removing your precious perception from the thing you needed to take care of while it was still called “today!”

Our present time has become perilously occupied and as addicts we crave more and more of both quantity and frequency. We can scarce handle a break in entertaining media. In our compulsion our time diminishes leaving us exhausted and busy and tired. Instead of running, running, running we should stop and have the courage to take on the moment that is now. Don’t busy yourself with trifles. Don’t log on or search or shop. Don’t turn on anything but your beautiful mind. Allow yourself to feel again. Let pleasant and unpleasant emotions just be. Look at those thoughts that dog you and grab them by their leash. Consider whether they’re real or imagined. Push through the veil and see who has been driving your bus. Who or what has been moving you against your will from what’s most important to you in life and convincing you to settle for less than that? What wrong ideas or untested theories are hiding in the darkness and acting as chains to bind you where there are no limitations? The answers to these questions; to anything that ever plagued you are all right here, obvious and clear in the moment called now, in the sweet reverie between you and your Creator.

The message has been playing all around you since time was first initiated. It’s in the still small voice. It’s in quiet meditation. It’s in the honesty of prayer. It’s in yoga and in sitting still. It is found in every sunrise and sunset. It’s blended in the green of the tree leaves and grass and the bluish hue of the sky. It’s the ocean, the sand and the gentle breeze. It’s unplugged, outside and in every woods. It is your cherished life right now, and now, and now.  It is your distinctive, wonderful experience of life both right now and in every incredible, future, unique now.

Don’t grieve God’s heart by passing time and finding things to get you from one moment to the next. Don’t occupy yourself for occupation’s sakes. Don’t waste time in mindless distraction or in things not worthy of your experience. Instead harvest the bountiful crop to be savored in every precious moment of life. Honor your own heart and your own feelings. Trust yourself and move confidently toward those things that warm you and ask your heart to speed up. Open your eyes and finally see the incredible attention to detail; the unfailing love; the miracle that is this life all wrapped up in the wonder of time right now…

How cloudy, how faded, how dim our true recollection of times gone past

How blurry, how hidden, how hazy our view of some future day

Yet how clear, how true, how faithful the record of our lives ever in the moment called now

Live always your life now…

Just some good thoughts…

 

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Flashes of Light…


unnamedThere is no such thing as an ordinary life. Each one of us, uniquely made and different, have something to contribute to the world. We have the opportunity to offer what we alone do best and from whence we have no rival. In order to escape the mundane, the mediocrity, the humdrum that plagues the world, we have to find those flashes of light that lead us to our true purpose. And, while our purpose is inside of us, we need the light from the outside to guide our paths.

We all know that the sunshine does something positive to us. How many difficulties are immediately resolved in our minds just because the sun is shining? Gloomy days, also a part of life, remind us to seek the sunlight. Similarly, gloomy thoughts remind us to look for the light that warms and comforts us. Days, weeks and years spent in gloomy thoughts lead us unwillingly to the pain that is a life with no purpose, no point. Yet behind each dark cloud is the light that is always present, waiting for us to recognize it and embrace it. Our job is not to produce the light, but rather to seek it until we find it. The light that guides us is found in flashes of insight and understanding.

Those insights; the subtle beckoning of a change in direction or a suggested change in our thinking are all around us if we start paying attention. They show up in those moments of repose or when we admire the lifestyle of another person. It’s found in the gentle appeals to something better inside of us; some more sublime, sweet way to exist. The reason men and women fail to see the light is because they get trapped in some mindset, some hard, fast , habitual way of thinking that falsely presumes what life is and all that can be accomplished or enjoyed. The problem is that we but half live our days functioning by rote instead of seeking the new and profound in each day. Each day offers us the opportunity to live anew with fresh experiences and learning, but we’ve become so accustomed to our routines that we cannot discern it. And while the routines are necessary, they also serve to cut us off from a full life.

It seems many people as they age settle into certain patterns of existence. The days blur together because they are lived without inquisitive thought, without new learning, but instead with mindless repetition. Young people, still consumed with the idea of life, actively seek new experiences with a mind still bent on gaining a better view. Aging is not the issue, but rather the amount of time that has transpired to inculcate certain habits of thought. The light has not become less available, it’s just harder to see with a fixed mindset. The light becomes diminished with our insistence on thinking we already know, thus closing us off from all that we do not know. It’s not easy to break certain habits of thought, but break them we must if we wish to fulfill our experience of life.

The true joy of living is not often found in hallmark events, but in the mechanics of every day life. The proposed destination is not the only part of the process. Learning to enjoy the journey is the paramount experience. The life that God has given us is infused with rich variety and opportunities for discovery and each day is pregnant with the possibility of new learning. For this reason, we have to unchain ourselves from our habitual behaviors. Get up at a different time. Choose a different route to work. Instead of arriving home from work to occupy the couch and the television for the evening, go for a walk in the park or meet friends on a weeknight instead.

One great hold back to a fulfilled life, offering your best “you” to the world is that tyrannical insistence on being whom everyone already thinks you are. People, in their attempts to classify and categorize us, assign us to some place in life usually described by a word or two. Instead of becoming more and more a rich cumulation of experiences, we allow ourselves to be assigned as, “the comedian” or the “drinker” or the “hard worker” when those aspects simply point to one portion of our existence. My wife exhorted me to stop posting pictures on Facebook of me drinking wine as over time I became defined as, “the wine guy” falsely assuming wine to be the point of my existence. And while I definitely have an affinity for fine wine, my greater affinity is for a passionate, experienced filled life.

At the end of the day, each of us have the privilege to be exactly whom we choose to be, not held in by the group’s assessment. The magnificent uniqueness of who you are is encouraged and fanned by your experiences of life. Be the person you desire to be spurred on by those flashes of insight and refuse to be locked into to some minimalist viewpoint of who you are. Choose to walk a path designed for you and for you alone. Break free from the stumbling herd and live the days of your existence exactly as you desire to live them. Listen to music that inspires you though no-one you know enjoys it. Make plans and goals too lofty for your present mindset and enjoy your incredible journey of becoming.

Your life is way too short to be anything less than exactly what you want. It is your one shot my friends, and the determining factor always was and always will be you.

Just some good thoughts…