Each New Moment: Knowing the Need for Now

I was riding the bike at the gym a few days ago, which is usually a time I let all thoughts die away. However, as I road listening to pop and dance music so that I maintained the pace, a fragment of thought whispered to me above the music. I heard "tomorrow" and "today." I don't have schizophrenia; I don't hear voices. I promise. However, when I heard "prospect," "tomorrow," and again "today," I turned off my music to listen with an open mind. This time I heard, "At the prospect of tomorrow, I see the need for today." What would that mean? Why was I being whispered this phrase?

I have been thinking on it for a few days now and still don't know where it came from, but I know where my desire to hear it came from. In my current condition, a.k.a my preoccupation in the present moment, one of my friends, whom if he knew I was writing about him would freak out because of his need for the close confines of his personal "closet" and his affinity for his alias, has expressed his concern for my need for the present moment and my continual residence within the solace of the moment. My friend said that I needed to keep the future in mind because if I don't, problems, unforeseen, would sneak up on me.

While this may be true and may be a necessity for him, the future is too dark and shadowy to remain in my troubled mind. When I think on the future, I can't help but stress out at the prospect of dead-end jobs and the inability to pay my student loans. Also, the prospects of future wars and civil disturbances leave me in an agitated state. Fear takes hold and darkens the day. The future holds within it unnecessary stresses and worries that don't exist yet. They are shadows beyond the next moment that I can't seem to touch or meet. As soon as I meet the future, it becomes the past and so on into infinity.

As I struggle to maintain fragmentary moments of peace and sanity, I find that dwelling on the past leaves me bitter because of perceived failures. As I look to the future, I am struck with unmet pleasures or pains. What I've created in the past and the nonexistent future are continually and unnecessarily focused on. However, I understand my friends concern for my focus solely in the present. Understanding that concern is why I was given that moment of inspiration. That whisper came to me because the creation of each new moment allows for the betterment of each new moment.

If we become aware of what we do now and how it effects the next moment and the next after that, eternally, we must strive for an eternal betterment of the present moment. For example, a smile now can carry a smile to someone else's now and so on, but it also effects your personal present moment. Our joy in turn effects the joy of others' nows and continues the joy of your eternal moments. Thus, "at the prospect of tomorrow, I see the need for today" and the must see the need for now.

We Are All Connected

In a voiceover monologue at the end of the movie Latter Days, the protagonist Aaron Davis says, "Sometimes it all still feels like a mass of dots. But more and more these days, I feel like we're all connected. And it's beautiful... and funny... and good." I have seen this movie many times and the truth of this statement has never really hit me until the start of this new year. I think part of the reason that it is hitting me differently now and that I am writing about it is an experience I had when I was down in St. George working side by side with my two amazing parents and creating beauty through landscaping the backyard. 

While I was in St. George, every morning before my parents and I got to work on the backyard, I would wake up and take my yoga mat out on the back porch that faces the rising sun. The blue hues in the sky and the white, wispy clouds greeted me with the joys of a renewed day. I laid my mat down and sat in the lotus position. With my headphones in but at a low volume, I put the meditative practices of Thich Nhat Hanh and Sister Jina van Hengel from the "Plum Village Meditations" on and began to exist solely in the moment. 

Sister Jina van Hengel guided me through breathing and exercises in dwelling in the present moment. At the end of "Plum Village Meditations," Sister Jina van Hengel guided me through a meditation to relieve anger and resentments toward my parents. (This mediation can be used to release resentments towards others too, but she focuses on the parents.) As I went through the meditation, envisioning my parents at the age of 5 years old, I saw them as fragile and pure beings whom, as they grew, experienced their own sufferings, struggles, and pains. Realizing and acknowledging this, I was able to have compassion for my parents and my love for them grew and continues to grow. I continue to try to water those seeds of love, compassion, and knowledge.

As I sat on the porch with my legs losing the circulation of blood and tingling with sensation, my awareness opened to the pigeons cooing in the nearby trees, the faint breeze caressing my face, the purifying light of the sun as it washed over my face, and the sounds of the neighborhood children waiting for the bus, I felt the connectivity of everything. I became aware of how everything touches everything with souls, if you want to call them souls, or energy. The hum of the pulsing energies of the universe coalesced and washed over me. 

With the compassion I felt for my parents, at that moment, I realized that everyone deserves that compassion because we are all connected, whether through our creator or through the chaos of creation. Our souls or energies meet, touch, and connect with one another. I felt pure joy for the moments I have and for the souls and energies that have touched mine, in pleasure or in pain. Sometimes, I still can't see through the confusion and chaos of life, but "more and more these days, I feel like we are all connected. And it's beautiful...and funny...and good." 

Blissful Present Moment: Sharing and Creating Moments

Have you ever wished for a tabula rasa or a blank slate? I don't know about you, but as for me, I crave a blank slate. To be free from your past seems like it could be very open and refreshing. And the idea that the future doesn't exist and is only the creation of the moment in everything we make it to be. I think that is an amazing thought.

In the novel Chapterhouse: Dune by Frank Herbert, Herbert writes, "Let the future remain uncertain for that is the canvas to receive our desires. Thus the human condition faces its perpetual tabula rasa. We possess no more than this moment where we dedicate ourselves continuously to the sacred presence we share and create" (118). The one part of the statement that has stuck with me is to remain in the moment and let everything remain unwritten. We as humans are able to create each new moment for ourselves and for others.

I know I have already expounded on living in the present moment, but I think it is an important thing to realize and share with others. I suppose its like being a missionary and sharing a truth you have discovered in this life. But the present moment is not everything. It is sharing the joy of the present moment with those around you that becomes truly an amazing experience.

Whether it is destiny for some people to be placed in our lives at specific moment or not doesn't matter. It is what is created in the shared experience that does matter. Many instances in my life, previously, have been seen as negative experience for me, but when seen through new eyes and with a blank slate, those experiences helped to shape me into who I am today. And some of the people with whom I have had these shared experiences, have helped me to find the path on which I find myself.

I've mentioned my being bullied before, in previous blogs, and have spoken of the sadness and pain that stemmed from the moment. However, as I look at that experience, not with the eyes of a tortured youth, but with a clean slate and bright eyes, I see that those moments have allowed me to have empathy for those who suffer. Those moments of pain and sadness at the hands of others have allowed me to try to ease the suffering of others where I can. Also, looking at a clean slate, I can learn to forgive those people who caused me the pain and to thank them. Thanking them may sound a little too much, but because of the paths that we were all on and what we chose to do, I was able to become a better person.

As for shared experiences, when I first started at Utah Valley University, I took an English class that I chose at random because it fit with my work schedule, but little did I know that random selection would put me in the classroom of Ronda Walker-Weaver. She was (is) a great teacher, and that's all, at first, I saw her as, but I gained a friend and a mentor. Ronda helped me onto the path on which I am continuing. I was, at the time, trying to decide between an anthropology major or an English major. Ronda gave me some advice. She said that if I got my English degree and still wanted to do something else, that my English degree would not hinder me, but would rather help me with my other endeavors. That advice sent me meditating while walking through the halls. When I stopped, I sat down and looked up to see the English department in front of me. I took it as a sign. If it wasn't for Ronda and her advice she gave me that day, I don't know where I would be.

If we "let the future remain uncertain," live in the present moment, and "dedicate ourselves...to share and create," we can create a wonderful present moment. We can "share and create" moments of bliss rather than shared experiences in pain. We can establish ourselves in the joyous here and now. And we can "stand in the sacred human presence" because we are all sacred beings given purpose in this world. I want to share in that purpose and make every present moment count. Don't you?

Grass is Greener

As I had my days off, I talked with my parents a lot about life and the things with which I struggle. I discovered, in talking to them, that I have yet another disorder. This disorder is not one that only I suffer from. Many people in the world today suffer from this disorder and I still am not even sure if it is recognized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV), though it should be. I am terming the disorder the "Grass is Greener" disorder.

In everything I do, there is always something wrong with it. I am never just happy with the job I have because there has got to be something better out there, if I could only find it. Where I am living now has so many things wrong with it, so there has got to be somewhere else that is better. The person I am dating is okay, but there has got to be someone more perfect. Anything has got to be better than what I have now. When I am suffering, and sometimes when I am not, there is always this trigger in my head that seems to think that it is time to tell me everything else is better than what I have now.

The Grass is Greener disorder is very persistent. It is very hard to find contentment in anything when your brain is always telling you there has got to be something better. I think one of the major issues with the Grass is Greener disorder is you can never be happy with where you are; the present moment is not considered because the past was so bad that the future has to be better than what it was, even if what you have now is really great. The focus on what you have is never really there. You can't see past what you think the future holds to see what is really there and what is good for you now.

I am trying very hard to break free of this disorder, but it is very hard. I don't know how to focus on the present moment when I have been focusing on the future since I was young. When you are young, you get asked questions about your future like "what do you want to be when you grow up," and other questions; you learn to live in the future mentality and forget the current and beautiful present moment.

However, if we, yes, not just me, can learn to live in the present moment and stop looking to the greener pastures, the Grass is Greener disorder will lose its control over us. We will learn to be content with what we have instead of what we don't have. We will learn that where we are is where we are supposed to be and who we are with is who we are meant to be with at that very moment. I have a mantra that I try to tell myself everyday that I learned from Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist philosopher. The mantra is, "Dwelling in the present moment, I realize this is a wonderful moment." If we can focus on the present moment, life will be wonderful and we will have defeated the Grass is Greener disorder because the grass on which we stand is the most beautiful and the most green.