Mindful toilet cleaning

As I have many times confessed, my life becomes chaotic at times and I lose sight of the things that make me feel better. Things like meditation and mindful awareness of the present moment. When I feel overwhelmed by information or rapid changes in my life, sometimes I start trying to focus on too many things at once. All the things that need my attention compete for time.

When I have many things on my mind at once, none of it gets any quality attention, there are these half-assed attempts to meditate and to settle down and let the answers come to me. And I feel wound up because I know I’m spinning my wheels.

One thing I have learned over the years is that I never really figure anything out, not the big stuff anyway. The most productive way for me to deal with the questions life presents is to be still and silent and quiet my mind. The answers just come in those moments. There’s no figuring anything out, it all just starts to make sense.

Focusing attention on only one thing at a time helps too.  That is the problem with letting life run me rather than me running my life. When I’m trying to figure out too many things at once, my attention gets spread out and the amount of attention I am able to pay to any one thing is small and weak. Not enough to accomplish anything.

And then there is the stuff I can’t do anything about. But the thoughts intrude anyway. Anything that has to do with figuring out the behavior of another person is a waste of my time and I wish to stop that kind of merciless, torturous thinking.

“If you can solve your problem, then what is the need of worrying? If you cannot solve it, then what is the use of worrying.” ~Shantideva

Something I find interesting is how one’s physical world reflects one’s state of mind. When I am calm my surroundings tend to be neat and organized, which leads to even more feelings of peace and calm. As soon as my mind starts running in several different directions like a pack of wild horses, my bedroom and the rest of my home become cluttered and messy. Not dirty, just not tidy. Once that slips away from me for a day or two, it begins to also feel overwhelming and then my surroundings look much the way my mind feels.

My moment of clarity came today while cleaning the bathroom. I was fully present while I was cleaning. I was reminding myself to stay in the present moment and I was aware of each thing I was doing. There was a tremendous sense of peace that came with it. It reinforces my belief that NOW is the only moment that truly exists. NOW is where transformation happens. NOW is where the present moment meets eternity. And when you are here, you can feel the power. 

The past several days my mind has been in the past sort of failing to accept how things have unfolded, and in the future, trying to will things the way I wish for them to go. When I finally wake back up and recognize the futility of what I am doing, then I am able to bring everything back to the present, where there is never anything to worry about. In any given moment, if I’m here, breathing, heart beating, I’m fine. The moment those things cease…still fine.

I’m grateful for quiet moments and life’s little responsibilities that help remind me that the only thing that is important is right now and what I do with it. And it always boils down to the same question: Do I want to put more love and peace into the world or more fear, worry and chaos?

I think the answer is obvious.

Choose your weapon

A couple of days ago I was really feeling the weight of the life path I have chosen for myself. But I need to remember it is my choice and that is the reason it feels like work sometimes. Many people go through life on auto pilot and life sort of happens to them by default. That’s how it felt for me up until a few years ago. Deciding to show up for my own life requires me to build muscle in areas of my life where I was completely sedentary for many years. Now life presents challenges and I have to meet them using tools I previously didn’t even know existed.

Life does get easier in ways as I continue to practice my beliefs. It is largely due to the greatest reward of mindful awareness–the power of choice. The knowledge that I don’t have to just let life happen to me has been the most liberating piece of information I have ever received. That I am not at the mercy of a God who is separate from me and is keeping tally of my screw ups in order to punish me properly at the end of my life. Once those shackles came off, life got a lot easier for me.

The thing awareness does is allow one to choose how to respond in any situation. I appreciate being able to choose how I interact with people. I’ve been fortunate enough to experience what happens when I choose kindness in situations when I’ve had other options.

I have figured out there are two ways to lighten one’s burden in life–give away your garbage or give away your gifts and blessings. Giving away garbage seems to cause the generation of more garbage, but giving away blessings not only brings more blessings, it allows a person to transform the garbage…into even more blessings.

I like blessing people. Those are the times when I feel most alive and blessed myself.

When you are placed in a situation where you must choose how to respond, look inside yourself. What do you find there? There are many choices–ugliness or beauty, judgment or compassion, indifference or kindness. It does take a moment to sort through the options and make a decision sometimes, but what’s the hurry? We have all the time in the world.

Right now…like the Van Halen song

Seems like it might never stop raining in Portland.  The news said we are 258% above average rainfall for this month.  That’s a lot, even for Oregon.  I’m so ready for some sunshine.  I think it would help my mood immensely.  I’m not in a bad mood, just a blah one.  Rain does that to me after a while because it just slows everything down in a weird way.

I feel pretty hopeful today.  I picked up a book by Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, and started reading it again.  I remember liking it the first time around.  I also really enjoyed A New Earth, another very insightful book of his.

Reading The Power of Now helped me find my bearings a bit today.  Sometimes when I read something that really makes sense to me by someone whose logic I respect, it makes me feel better, like I’m heading in the right direction, like I’m thinking the right kinds of thoughts about the right kinds of things most of the time.

This book really stresses being in the present moment, possibly more than any book I have read.  And it does so in a wonderfully firm, no-nonsense way.  I have read many books by Thich Nhat Hanh where he makes the same points just as effectively, but in a very different, softer way.  So beautiful, but so different from Eckhart Tolle.

I am grateful for the ability to be aware most of the time.  I’ve been working at it for 6 years, but it’s been worth it.  To be present and aware is to be able to experience joy at any moment, just by choosing it.  When you exist unconsciously, living in the past or the future, you lose the true power of choice.  In my opinion, it’s not really possible to affect positive change in life without paying attention.  Things happen by default which can keep a person in a fairly constant state of reaction.  That’s why things seem so random sometimes.  But really, nothing ever happens for no reason.

Being in the now is the safest, most peaceful place a person can be.  The past is just the memory of now moments that we’ve already lived through successfully to get to this one.  And if we can fully embrace and appreciate the moment we are in right now, it will give birth to another glorious and perfect now.  We just have to let it happen without resisting.

Eckhart Tolle says if you find yourself struggling against your present life circumstances, you should either remove yourself from it, change it if you can, or learn to accept it for what it is.  Doing one of those things will put an end to suffering and produce peace.  This is the truth as I have experienced it.  As I have learned to accept things how they are, my life has gotten easier in ways.  At least I don’t punish myself constantly with worry anymore.  I know that worry never helps anything, so I find something else to do.  And whatever I find to do is always way more fun than worrying.  Go figure.

Recently life has begun to feel like an adventure I am on with the angels.  I know they will help me take care of things and when I can’t see the how of it, I just smile and wonder what beautiful miracle is on its way to me at this very moment.

I’m pretty sure I’m still going to have moments of doubt and suffering, but I know I possess the tools to move out of that pretty quickly.

So, I think the angels and my kids and I will see what we can make out of these now moments.  I think it’s going to be good.

“Right now, hey it’s your tomorrow. Right now, C’mon, it’s everything.” ~Van Halen

Be Here Now

Yesterday a friend of mine reminded me of the night my spiritual awakening suddenly sped up about a year and a half ago.  The night I almost gave up.  It’s been a while since I have thought about it.  That’s probably a good thing.

An amazing transformation happens when a person gets a taste of ultimate despair.

Having that experience changed me profoundly.  I had been depressed and heartbroken before in life, but had never seriously considered giving up altogether until that night.  And it was my birthday.  That’s pretty sad to remember.  Every single one of my illusions about everything shattered that night.  Ultimately that is a good thing, but when it happens all at once, it’s a very frightening experience.  By the end of that night, I didn’t have any beliefs anymore.  There was not a single thing I could say I believed as a certainty.  There still isn’t very much.  I believe in love.  And that’s really all.

I’m a better person now.  I don’t think I’m special or fundamentally different from anyone.  At the end of the day we’re all here for the same reason and all want the same things, to be happy, to avoid suffering and to give and receive love.  That’s all there is and every action is born of one of those.

My existence is dedicated to the force many of us call God or the Universe or the Source.  I use all of those terms and more.  My life is my gift to my fellow humans and to God as a show of gratitude for all the blessings I have received.  All that I have I offer to others.  I don’t have many material possessions, but I do have a unique perspective and a modest talent for writing which allows me to share the things that have made a huge difference in my development.  Those I offer freely to anyone who can benefit from them.

The night I wanted to give up was a night of ultimate awareness.  My eyes were opened and I saw straight into the mysteries of the universe.  Suddenly everything made sense.  It was still really painful, but I understood.  That’s why I seem generally positive to people.  I’m just glad to be here, because I know there was a time I didn’t want to be and wasn’t sure if I would be.  Everything after that is icing.  As difficult as my life is for me at times, I am living it and I am right here, present and aware most of the time.

In times of suffering as well as times of joy, being in the present moment is the only time we are ever truly living our lives.  Whenever our minds are in the past or the future we are missing out on life, it is passing us by.  The great thing about staying present during the suffering is that any mistakes I make from here on out will never be made again in my life.  Patterns of behavior are busted when we are paying attention and willing to change.  To the extent that I am able to pay attention to my life, I never have to repeat mistakes or painful, habitual patterns anymore.  The choice is mine, habits do not rule me.  That alone is worth the effort it takes to be present in the now.

After so many years of being disconnected from my feelings out of shame for having them, really feeling things is glorious.  It adds such depth to life.

As much as I feel like I unload in this blog, at a fundamental level, I am happy.  There are blessings on their way that will bring even more joy into my life, but I’m still happy now, even with all the uncertainty and angst.  Because I’m here, now, in the present moment where everything is always fine.