A dear friend asked me woefully: “How can I keep being in the moment and still do the big open-ended future things that I care about and meet the goals I think will give me a sense of meaning and value?” This post is a letter to him.
I’ve been with this question for over 3 decades now. Even though I may be a slow learner, I’m hoping that my insight might save others from taking quite so long….
Being in the moment is no small feat. It takes practice. As I noticed this morning: my friend kept interrupting our talk, having to shift the phone, change phones, move to another spot – each time, disrupting the peace and ease of our connection. I had enough ‘inner resource’ to notice that agitation, and not ‘need’ (feel compelled) to ride that agitation wave. Instead, I dove into the deeper waters of myself, that I’ve been visiting over these years — the waters that have those beautiful kelp forests that nourish the organisms living there, who then nourish me.
I’m able to soften around the agitation. I have the felt experience that there is a deeper layer of water to dive to. I have tried this many times before and failed, instead creating more agitation – inside myself and with others. Even to the point of blame: “Why do you need to keep moving phones? You’re interrupting each time we start something!”
Within the span of human experience, I’d say there are those agitating stimuli potentially every nanosecond: either our thoughts or external ‘noises.’ Sometimes I succumb to treading water in the choppy waves of agitation, doubt, self-criticism or criticism. What I want to emphasize here though is that with practice, there is a shift in the percentage of time ‘in the turbulence’ before diving under to find peace.
How? That’s the question that so many people have spent thousands of dollars on, and rightfully so. Spiritual traditions and practices, self-help books, workshops galore — they all direct us on this path of finding peace within.
My little bit of wisdom from this corner of the universe (this tide pool of the ocean!) is: We can’t get to where we want to go by being upset that we’re not there. All we can do is notice that we’re upset that we’re not there, and be with that. Then, things shift again.
And with practice, they shift to more hope and agency (ability to mobilize ourselves towards what we want to be doing) and then more self-trust and gratification for living our lives in more alignment with our values. (These are by the way written in semi-chronological order, and then they cycle around again…)
Being in this present moment as I write, taking a deep breath, I notice with excitement how many ‘ways in’ there are to practice ‘being present with what’s so.’ But for now, again to this friend, who already is conversant with Nonviolent Communication (www.baynvc.org; www.cnvc.org) I want to say this:
Noticing thoughts, feelings and sensations with conscious choice, to stay with those long enough to then inquire about what the needs are underneath, and then be able to ‘deepen into’ the experience of those needs — either grieving that they’re not being met, or celebrating that they are, or if you’re somewhere in between these two, being able to sense into the felt experience of what it would be like if the need were met, or finally, if you can’t feel into the need being met, then…(sometimes visual is easier than sensate)… Can you picture the need as a being, an entity that you’re greeting — reaching out your hand, seeing that it’s almost here with you, or that it’s walking away from you. This often shifts you into the release of grief, or the gentle experiencing of the need as something that is human, and is yours just because you are human, and though you may not have your needs met in this moment, there is an acceptance that settles into you, a gentle awareness that life is more spacious than the agitation, more complex than ‘either/or.’ The ‘both/and’ of some needs met, and others not, becomes your home base. The deeper layers of the ocean are full of ‘both/and.’ The choppy surface waves tend to reflect ‘either/or.’
How do you build the capacity to dive under, especially when you’ve just read the above paragraph and it seems too complicated, too hard?
That’s when you check in with yourself again, in this moment, to see what’s going on now. What are the feelings, sensations, and thoughts you’re experiencing now?
This is the incremental process of teasing out new insight. Slowly.
If there’s impatience, and a stronger voice that has an edge (of criticism or self-criticism), likely you’re still in the choppy waves.
And that’s really okay. Can you be with that?
Can you notice that you’re unwilling to dive a little deeper to notice the agitation?
No?
Fine.
Be agitated. Be critical. Be self-critical. Feel that.
That’s being with what’s so.
It will shift.
Eventually, it will shift.
For those of us with life-long patterns of having organized our experience to minimize our pain, many of us will shift into those easier, more reliable choices: to be depressed, to multi-task, to choose something that seems ‘easier.’
This is the dilemma — not an either/or dilemma, but a real, existential, complex one: Making peace with what’s so and being fully engaged in the longer-term goals of life is not our default choice. Unless your parents, caregivers and the culture around you as a child were incredibly present and supportive of your learning to think flexibly in every moment and incrementally explore how to become a resilient ‘Self,’ you’ve likely built patterns that short-circuit both presence and ironically also some of your ‘adult’ goals, needs and values.
There really is hope, if you’re willing to be an adventurer, courageous in the face of disappointments, and willing to brush yourself off and get up again. The more we have the capacity in each moment to be physically, mentally, emotionally spacious, relaxed, and ‘present’ with the complexity of all that is going on, the more we’ll be able to Be in the Moment and In Action towards our life’s purpose.
Does this help, dear friend?
I hope so.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PS: I’ve heard of only rare situations (like Ekhart Tolle alone on a park bench) where this peace is found without the support of others — community, friends, counselors, pastors, rabbis, coaches. I write this postscript as a pre-emptive strike against the turbulence some of you reading this might be experiencing right now: either in the throes of self-criticism about not having understood what I just wrote; or criticism of me for having written it…. These default responses are understandable — and in fact, expected. And so this is what you have now to work with! If you can ask a friend or trusted advisor for support, it will be a powerful first step: acknowledging our need for others to help us more reliably trust in ourselves is the most basic paradox and promise of making peace with what’s so.