Coming to the Now

Perhaps the hardest step for us to take is the step into the present, into the nothingness of a moment untouched by the past, and unmarred by want, judgment or motivation, to spend a few moments in naked communion with all that we are and all that we are a part of.

It’s understandable if it’s not easy. We carry our fears within us. Everything from the tiniest insecurity to the looming Doom of Mortality itself. And while we struggle with those fears, anxieties and doubts, they are familiar to us. And their familiarity dulls their potency as we experience our resignation, exhaustion or depression from them. But, if we think about stepping into the abyss, chaos, the utter unknown, then we have to confront new fears, like the fear of what we know we don’t know. We have to risk being judged, even if just by ourselves, of being found wanting, feeling paltry and small. And we have invested far too much time and effort in bracing ourselves and pumping ourselves up to gamble all of that on a wild dance with the unknown.

It takes tremendous patience and self-compassion to sit in one’s mediocrity. We will never feel as small as when we contemplate the universe, all of life, and our complete incapacity to control it all. We feel small and powerless when we tune into our deepest emotions. That’s because our earliest, most formative, experiences were when we were small, when we were a child. And, as a child, we were constantly confronted by those facts. We are small. We are weak. We are not in control. We were born into a world of giants. These giants were enabled by size, knowledge and capacities that were literally magical to us. We were tiny, weak creatures striving to feel safe among the doings of the gods of an enchanted, sometimes terrifying, land. We all, deep within us, remember how that felt.

So it’s very uncomfortable for us to return to those feelings. We’ve invested our entire adult life in fleeing from and building bulwarks against those feelings. So it’s very confronting to try and sit in peace with those feelings. Even the sweetest childhoods have moments of terror, confusion and grief. These feelings are what drives us all day everyday. We are deeply conditioned to spring into reaction to these sensations and thoughts. So to let them be is to leave our habits, our identity, our comfortable conception of who we are and what’s happening around us. It’s a jarring and bracing moment to live in. To suddenly feel your skin, to breathe, to see, as if for the first time.

I can offer reassurance and soothing promises to attempt to lower your fears, your inhibitions, but those feelings must still be felt. For that is precisely the exercise, to be with whatever joins you in the void. Not to give it a name. To simply dangle in the moment, quaking, jagged and raw. To namelessly embrace what visits you with unwavering attentive love, as if you were your own beloved child.

Namaste.

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