By Tammy T. Stone
Now. Why is it so hard to be here?
I settle down into a comfortable position to meditate, wrapped in soft blankets, and close my eyes.
Lately, I’ve been more distracted than usual, and between sporadic flashes of mental nudging to attend to my breath, I am anywhere but here. I don’t dwell on each memory or thought for long—during meditation, that is—but there is a light, frenetic dance of consciousness in which my breath is just beyond the outer reaches of the galaxy, within my field of awareness, obscured.
I don’t know where exactly this plane of consciousness resides. Part of me wrestles lightly, almost tiptoeing around the halls of now, but breezes come wafting in from all directions; with them, the flotsam of so many of life’s moments.
I fall into my most comfortable trap: thinking.
It’s a salve after my adventures into the muck of seeking clear awareness, and a welcome diversion. I think about writing this very article, about the staggering fact that there is no pure present we can actually verbalize or form concepts around. I love verbalizing and forming concepts. It’s what I do.
I’m seized by a panic; unable to locate, even slightly, who is doing the sitting and thinking right now, and what she possibly has to say.
Who will I find there?
Will I like her?
Can I learn from her?
Can I stop wanting to learn and know, and just be with her?
Can I just be?
The thoughts come flooding in: how bizarre is it that in every single part of our existence we can be aware of what has already vanished? Of course, there is also the future, which always seems willing to be worried about, but all the tools we have in our arsenal of self-identity, everything we tend to believe makes us us, is firmly lodged where we have once been—unreachable except to be available for endless rounds of re-interpretation.
The second we grasp that we are experiencing a present moment, it’s slipped through to that place behind, where it lends itself to becoming a plaything: a memory, a relic, a nostalgia basin.
We self-identify by means of the relics of who we have been.
Is this useful?
To a degree, sure. It allows us to do everything from remember to brush our teeth, hold conversations, go to work every day, and evolve on our paths of growth; even as it also holds us down and sets us firmly within the bounds of self-imposed limitations.
We must want more than to be a living, breathing museum of our former selves.
We watch the future cruise right into the past, sailing down that winding waterways of us without stopping to say hello here and now, wake up!—without checking in with the present moment.
We long for the now, for a pause, a break, a change of pace, a chance to regroup, to breathe life’s wild things.
We know, deeply, that to move forward, we have to find a point of stillness from which to begin. We are not clocks tick-tocking forward ad infinitum, with no purpose other than to mark the passage of something that’s been designated as chronological time.
We consist entirely of who we were: we are fragile, open and hopeful beings who know down to the bones that there’s more to life than time passing. We are lured into hope through absolute stillness. Maybe on a clear, starry night, at the beach gazing at the horizon beyond the sea; maybe hearing crickets at twilight or breathing in the silence in a forest; or maybe looking into the eyes of an old friend, a new lover.
This is when the stream of our lives stops, and fears give way to an offering that proves to be our greatest teacher, and most reliable guide.
What can our future memories consist of, anyway, if our now-moments are restless and polluted with distraction? Don’t we owe it to ourselves to discover who we essentially are in the space of real present awareness, to enrich our lives in ways that have nothing to do with grasping at the Jekyll and Hyde security our memories inspire?
This is what I want to discover. I don’t want to be a gallery retrospective of all the moments that have brought me here. I want only to be here, in a time outside of time, and in a space that branches out much wider than my thinking mind can take me.
I want to meet everyone else there too, in connection free of grasping, by welcoming without judgement.
This is why I sit on my cushion and close my eyes to face the deluge of thoughts, to try and stabilize my mind by remaining in awareness of breath, with hope and optimism for that elusive encounter with now.
Tammy T. Stone is a Canadian writer, photographer and chronicler of life as it passes through us. Always a wanderer, she’s endlessly mesmerized by people, places and everything in between; the world is somehow so vast and so small. She feels so lucky to have been able to work, learn, live and travel far and wide, writing, photographing and wellness-practicing along the way. She invites you to see some of her recent photography here and to connect with her on her writer’s page, Twitterand her blog, There’s No War in World, here.
Photo: (source)
Editor: Alicia Wozniak
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