Reclaiming the present

Be present. It is a mantra for many, and it is a good foundation upon which to live ones life. Being fully present is both a wonder and a challenge, and those of us who take on this particular facet (of which it is often part of a larger set of ideas that comprise an entire practice) do so with a willingness and openness that belies the underlying complexity of the simple statement: be present.

What is meant by this? And what are the complexities that make it up?

When we say "be present" we are referring to the idea that one's own mind is often the source of an endless spring of distractions. We sit, and are overwhelmed by the flood of our own imaginations. we thirst, we desire, we despair - it's all part of the process of both being with who we are and of being able to accept it, being gentle with our own selves and of being willing to stand within it but let it go. "thinking!" is often how some teach this.

the mind is a peculiar part of being human (though I will note parenthetically here that I am not at all persuaded that the other creatures, at least many orders of them, are not also victimized by thought, but that's another story). we think, therefore we are. And so it does flow. But when we stop and wonder what it is that is emanating from our minds, it becomes easier to understand not just the process and challenge of sitting, but also of being present and what that truly means.

Much of our lived experience is mae up of things that happen to us. we eat, we drink, we love, we travel, we listen, we hurt - all of these are part of our life experience. It is a sectrum of things that range from the sublime to the evil, the pained, and all of it together comprise what we feel and who we are. and all - all - these things that happen to us happenED to us, they are none of them future events. They all DID happen, it is the past, it is what we do to evaluate much of our experience.

It is also, in a great many respects, essential. But it is not and should not be the means by which we live our present. Lets examine this for a moment. When a child learns to walk, one of the things its parents try to do is to help the child learn about danger. That child, when approaching a busy street where cars or other larger objects may be whizzing past, must learn to stop and look and listen. Without it, there would be no direct experience to draw from to be able to inform future encounters with busy thoroughfares, or at least such informing would be burdened by deep pain. Thus the parents do what they must to instill in the child some sense of how to not be in the world, a way to avoid that potentially heartbreaking mistake. Such is not the case, however, in many other of life's experiences. We may fal ill and need serious medical attention. We may fall in love and, after some time, fall out of that love, leaving one or more of the participants in a state of deep sadness. these and many, most, other of our experiences in life are ways that we ourselves come to build a set of past experiences that inform the present. We FELL in love once, it hurt, and now, if faced with the possibility again, we may choose to remember that experience and perhaps be able to sidestep some of the things that might again lead to pain. this is the past informing our present.

And indeed, all - all - of our experience, our lived life, is made up precisely of these events. Each one becomes oart of who we are, part of our own "dictionary" of how we navigate further, how we live in the present, and, indeed, part of what our mind works with, in wake or in sleep, as we go through a day. It is here that the tumble of thoughts try and pull us out of the reverie of sitting meditation, and it is here that our minds try and bring us when we try and be present.

There are, over the course of a small section of each and every one of our lives, literally millions upon millions of these events. Some are so small and inconsequential so as to be meaningless. some are so routine that their service in our lives is simply part of a larger routinization, a needed process, that helps make life more comfortable. But the large majority of these events are far more than inconsequential. Some of us are comprised of an innumerable number of deep hurts - abuses, pains, neglect of all types - and these have become over time our map of experience. some of us are so deeply affected that we cannot escape the bonds of this past - the hurt is so continuous that it informs all events going forward: the ast becomes the future. Most of us, thankfully, do not suffer this way, but rather manage to manage those events, sorting out the ones of deep pain and setting them far away, or perhaps, if we're lucky, approaching them and with help or great skill, letting them simply be part of our lives. It's all a matter of balance, it's all a matter of how each one of us chooses to make sense of that past, to let it or not let it overwhelm and control us, to dictate the future.

And herein is, I think, the really difficult challenge of really, truly, being present. That flood of thought is our past, it emerges, deftly fooling us into thinking it is our imagination, or fooling us into believing that these are simply thoughts and feelings, too often not connected to some specific part of that past. This is quite normal and understandable, and something that we cannot and should not try to escape or avoid. But herein lies the challenge: when we seek to be "fully present" we are, in essence, asking ourselves to forget our past, to set aside deeply those very events that make us who we are, that sometimes protect us, that make our lives comfortable. We are expecting to be released from ourselves, to be allowed to wander freely in a setting that has no past. This is impossible of course. what, then, is the resolution?

Part of the process, I think, is to be able to take time to examine the self in the context of that jumble of lived experiences, with an eye toward singling out those moments, those events, that have deeply shaped and shaken us. To be able to stand up and tell ourselves that what happened happened, that it is part of that we must accept and embrace, but that it is PAST, not present. Being fully present must, in essence, become an event unto itself, informed by the past but not controlled by it. IT is often a matter of "stepping past" that past event or idea, of letting it go, knowing that it might well happen again. It is risk. It places us in a position of great vulnerability, a place that, often due to that same painful past set of experiences, can lead us to hide, to in effect, avoid being present in a manner that is tempered, and often ruled, by that past. Being fully present is about the now, but must have with it a willingness to open ones heart and mind to the realities, often painful realities, of a lived past, a very real past, that leaves us weak, subject to more pain, more difficulty.