Even though we experience a unique exhilaration when we awaken to the “now,” when we lose ourselves back into our functional activity, we forget the awe and magnificence of being present. We go on for long periods of time feeling stressed out, tense, overburdened, bored, and other undesirable states. We forget that there is something else – an oasis of being and loving, in this moment.
In order to come back to this oasis more frequently, yearning is required. This yearning is the spark that can ignite our dead wood into a blazing fire of love, to the point that we love whatever comes into our consciousness.
Many of us have a fear that prevents us from entering this current of love. When we enter this current, we cannot maintain a self-centered world and our ego has to submit and let go of its dominance. Our yearning has to grow stronger than our egoistic desires and fear. If it does not, we remain static and only occasionally awaken to being present.
We can increase our yearning when we awaken to the present by focusing our mind and heart on our desire. If we become conscious of our breathing while focusing our mind and heart, each breath can intensify our yearning until something else takes our attention away.
Each time I come back to the present it is like starting over. My goal is to increase the duration of this experience until it eventually becomes spontaneous. Every time I start again I have the cumulative benefit of the previous times.
Just like waking up in the morning when we have a new day in front of us, new opportunities, and another chance to manifest ourselves towards our goals – awakening to the present is the only way to hold the reins and steer ourselves towards the new opportunities and goals that we yearn for.
When I am not awake to the present, things come at me in ways that I cannot always appropriately deal with. I become negative and resentful and all sorts of knots form n my body and psyche. I feel helpless to the onslaught of uncontrollable events and depending on what happens externally, I feel “up” or “down.” When things are going well I am content. If I am too challenged by problems, I withdraw myself in hope of reducing the pain.
If we can lean how to enter deeply into the present even when we are in crisis, we can be emancipated even though we are feeling the pain and suffering more intensely. We begin to understand that the pain we experience is like the pain we experience with physical exercises when we are trying to increase our physical strength. We learn that it is better to face the difficulties head on rather than withdrawing to reduce the pain. We see that increasing our ability to consciously bear and endure increases our being our capacity for being present. The more we learn to consciously bear, the more we are given.
