Six Steps To Living in the Present Moment

The Challenge of Living in the Moment I was leading a telecall the other day with people who participated in my first spiritual retreat back in January.  At the beginning, we shared with each other brief updates about our lives--one high and one low over the last few months.  Most of us, including me, were wrestling with the challenge of how to be able to live more fully in and enjoy the present moment without being so obsessed and caught up in either the past or the future or the extreme busyness and demands of every day life.

I don't think we're alone in this challenge.  The ability to stay present at any given time is becoming a rare art with so many people.  We get caught up in the crazy and often overwhelming demands of staying alive and what we think comprises living life.  Consequently, time flies by without us ever really having lived in the moment.  We lose opportunities to create wonderful memories and experience deep enjoyment because we're so focused on other things.  And not living in the moment means that we're more likely consumed by the past or the future and whatever those two represent to us.

I shared the following story on our telecall out of which emerged during our conversation six powerful steps to being able to stay more fully present and plumb the depths of life.

A Parable

You've heard the zen story of the monk being chased by a ferocious tiger through the jungle.  He breathlessly comes to a clearing and is faced with a cliff right in front of him with a rope hanging over the side.  With the tiger catching up and no more options available, he quickly grabs the rope and shinnys down along the side of the cliff until he reaches the end of the rope.  He glances up and sees the tiger baring its hungry fangs.  He glances down and sees huge, sharp, jagged rocks beckoning to him 100 feet below.  What should he do?  About that time, two mice begin gnawing on the rope above him.  Now what?

Caught between a rock and a hard place, he suddenly notices something that captures his attention.  It's a bright red, delectable-looking strawberry growing out of the side of the cliff an arm's length away.  Hanging on to the rope with one arm and both feet, he reaches out with his other hand, plucks the strawberry, and puts it in his mouth.  Eating it, he exclaims, "This is the most delicious strawberry I believe God has ever made and I have ever tasted.  Yum, yum!"

The Parable's Point

What's the point?  If the monk had been totally preoccupied with the ferocious tiger (his past) or the menacing rocks below (his future) he would have missed out on the delicious strawberry (his present).  Right?

I often realize, when I'm reflective enough, that I tend to allow the guilt or regret or memories of the past to weigh in on me, which can overwhelm my present.  Or I tend to focus on the uncertainties of the future which inevitably raises my anxiety level in the present.

Why do we allow this to happen?  As one author puts it,

"The past is already gone, the future hasn't happened yet; the only moment we have is right now.  Why waste it?"

Notice what the monk does as he finds himself caught between his past and his future which empowers him to live in the moment in a beautiful way.  Six Steps:

Six Steps to Living in the Moment

FIRST, he sees the strawberry.  He notices it.  He's paying attention.

Do you realize how many "strawberries" you and I miss out on because we're simply not seeing or noticing or paying attention?  You can't enjoy what you don't see.

SECOND, he reaches for the strawberry.

It's one thing to see something.  It's another thing to reach out for it, to take an action to engage with what you're seeing.

Sounds easy enough.  But why then don't we do this more often?

Because reaching out for the "strawberry" takes a risk.  Think about the monk.  In order to reach out for the strawberry he has to let go of the rope with one arm.  That's risky.  Letting go is difficult.  But because he takes the risk, he ends up getting the reward.

I truly believe that nothing good in life comes to us without some risk.  You choose to love someone and you risk being hurt or rejected.  You choose

THIRD, he takes the strawberry.  You can't just reach for something, you have to take it to enjoy it.

So much of today's culture is a spectator culture.  People are satisfied simply sitting on the sidelines watching the game of life happen in front of them.

The tragedy with a spectator culture is that people actually delude themselves into thinking that watching is enough; that watching is the highest level of enjoyment and satisfaction.

It certainly might be safer on some levels.  If you're in the stands watching football, you're not getting beat up and tackled in the game.  But it's interesting, isn't it, that if the team we're watching wins, we feel really really good and satisfied.  But there's no way that feeling can match the exhilaration of the players who gave it their all in order to win the game.  Right?

"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."  George Bernard Shaw

We delude ourselves into thinking that spectating is good enough for joy and satisfaction.  But we're missing out on the deeper depths of truly worthwhile living.  We're robbing ourselves of real living in the moment.  We can't enjoy the strawberries unless we reach out and take them in hand.

Stay tuned for my next blog  the final three steps to plumbing the present moment for deeper joy and fulfillment.  "Six Steps to Living in the Present Moment."

Four Personal Reflections for You:

• Which is your tendency more often:  living in the past or living in the future?  Why?  What is it about either of those that traps you there?
• Describe a time when you simply missed seeing the strawberry in the moment--you weren't paying attention.
• What are some risks you face in order to reach out to the strawberry?  Which risks are hardest for you?
• Would you describe yourself more as a spectator or a participant?  Why?  Are there any excuses you have for watching more than participating?  What might be some fears you have of getting in the game more often?

Dealing With the Fear Of Taking the Risk To Be Alive

"Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive - the risk to be alive and express what we really are." Don Miguel Ruiz I spent some time this morning at the Federal Building for Immigration downtown San Francisco supporting one of my gay friends, a dear colleague in ministry and one of our leaders of Second Wind.  He appeared in front of an immigration judge this morning to tell his story in order to apply for legal asylum here in the States.  His request is based upon the real dangers of being gay in the religious subculture he lived and worked all of his adult life within in his home country.  When he emerged from the court room with his lawyer and we debriefed the experience, I asked him what it felt like to retell his story in great detail.  "It was cathartic in many ways but also very painful - remembering all the awful things I encountered when I came out as gay:  the ostracization from my church community, the loss of my pastoral occupation and reputation, my marriage, the pain for everyone including my kids who had to put up with ridicule from their friends and others, living with the fear of rejection every day, often experiencing it in painful ways.  But I feel good about how clearly and openly I told my story to the judge."  His son was there to speak to the judge on behalf of his father, too.  "I want for us both to be able to live here in this country and build our lives here," he told me.

Now my friend (along with his long time committed partner) waits for two weeks to hear the immigration judge's verdict.  And we wait with them as their friends and spiritual community who love them and are committed to the journey of life together.

And I'm reminded of the great courage and bravery he's manifesting to take the risk to be genuinely alive, the risk to express who he really is in spite of the consequences he's both faced and continues having to put up with even in this country.  I admire him for his honesty and his integrity to live with transparency and congruity.

It's not easy choosing to be alive and really live life in alignment and integration.  It takes risks.  We have to encounter our fears.  We have to be willing to fail from time to time but then to pick ourselves up and keep moving forward.  It's not easy.

Have you ever asked yourself what your biggest fears are to living the life you feel deep inside you're called to live?  What does the cage look like that might tend to keep you from being really alive?

Maybe that's why in my work with people I encounter so many who are simply trying to survive, to make it to death safely, not pushing the edges of their lives, simply maintaining the status quo.  It's easier that way - it appears less risky.  But notice I say "appears" because in actuality, it's more risky.  When you live your life out of alignment, not being who you really, trying to live someone else's life instead of your own, when you're not living your calling and purpose, settling instead for status quo, your inner spirit and physical body pick up on this lack of congruity and create what we call dis-ease - a restlessness inside, a lack of ease.  Experts remind us that this condition is a condition of stress.  And when you live with this state of stress for a long time it becomes chronic.  And chronic stress has been shown to be terribly debilitating to the body, leading to a susceptibility to disease and illness on multiple levels, including depression.  Our human systems are designed to experience maximum status when there's complete alignment between our emotions, our feelings, our thoughts, and our behaviors - when we're living within the integrity of our true selves, when we're using how we're wired with boldness and confidence and purpose.

As I listened to my friend's lawyer giving a thumbnail sketch of the process this morning and where it goes from here, I felt deep admiration for her as a professional who is so committed to helping people enjoy the opportunity to live life deeply and freely in this country.  I was reminded of the profound statement of mission and purpose Jesus stated when he began his ministry.  He quoted from Isaiah 61, applying the mission of God to himself:  "God's Spirit has anointed me and chosen me to bring freedom and liberation to the captives, to proclaim this as the year of God's redemption and favor for all."

In my opinion, this powerful and professional lawyer who is helping our friend and all her other clients has stepped into the legacy of the great prophets of old and Jesus himself who came to give all people the joy of freedom and liberation to be alive, really alive.

Filming the event this morning was another of my friends here in the City.  He and his wife (both leaders in our Second Wind spiritual community) are producing a documentary about gays who are trying to reconcile their sexual identity with their religious and spiritual orientation.  These two courageous people are sacrificing everything they have to travel the country (carrying their 20 month old daughter along) filming stories to highlight this tremendous need.  They, too, have stepped into the legacy of Jesus' mission of announcing the freedom and liberation to be alive, really alive, for all people.  I admire their persistent passion and boldness.

It takes courage to take the risk to be alive no matter what your orientation - "the risk to be alive and express what we really are."  This isn't about sexuality.  It's about being human on every level.  We all face it.  And it's risky business.  We have to take intentional steps forward every day, choosing to live deeply and purposefully instead of letting the days go by without any thought or awareness or momentum.  It's about choosing to live our God-given life, not someone else's.

But in the end, for those who are willing to take that risk for themselves and on behalf of others, the reward of living in alignment, of living with purpose and mission, of choosing courage and boldness instead of fear and intimidation will far outweigh the risks.  There's certainly stress in taking risks.  But this kind of stress - eustress - always trumps distress!  It's actually good for you.

I love the way George Bernard Shaw describes this kind of life.  This is the way I want to live.  This kind of life is the highest level of spirituality and it produces the most profound kind of transformation possible (Jesus' life showed this to be true).  Here it is:

"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a might one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

"I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

"I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live.  I rejoice in life for its own sake.  Life is no brief candle to me; it is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations."

So here's to taking the risk of being alive and expressing what we really are, for our sakes and for others and for Life itself!

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Your Swan Song and The Antidote to Busyness

[If you like these posts, feel free to share them with others - click on the share button to the right.  If you would like to receive each new blog post as an automatic email, please subscribe at the right.] Do you ever struggle with the challenge of trying to balance all the different commitments in your life like work, family, personal development, spirituality?  You perhaps want to pay equal attention to every area but then feel frustrated and sometimes guilty that you simply don't have the time or energy to do it all good enough?

In an article in the latest Inc. magazine, Nancy Rosenzweig, a serial entrepreneur and CEO and the mother of two small children shared a profound insight.  That fact that she also devotes significant time to volunteer work has sometimes caused tension at home.  In responding to criticism about the potential of neglecting the most important things in her life by simply being too busy, she paraphrased the poet David Whyte and said, "The antidote to buyness is not rest but rather 'wholeheartedness.'" She says that her community commitments, for example, don't deplete her - they energize her.  "Nurturing ourselves by doing things we're passionate about in turn allows us to 'wholeheartedly' nurture others - including our families and our companies."

It does raise the significant spiritual question, How are you replenishing your body, mind, heart, and spirit?  Is there anything you're involved in that you're engaging in  "wholeheartedly?"  Are you paying attention to what really energizes you, to what taps into your deep passion?  Or are you simply going through all the right motions in all the areas of your life, giving whatever you have to give to all of them, but your heart and soul are not being utilized or plumbed or stimulated?  You're working really hard (lots of activity) but you still don't feel like you're getting anywhere?  You're dissatisfied deep inside?  Are you simply busy, working diligently and with great effort, trying to be successful in everything, but experiencing a slow burn leading to a slow death inside?  You're losing track of who you really are?

David Whyte, in an excerpt from "Crossing the Unknown Sea," describes this reality with the words, "Your exhaustion is a form of inner fermentation. You are beginning, ever so slowly to rot on the vine."

What a tragic picture.  The grape is designed to grow on the vine, to mature to the point of being able to be harvested and ultimately turned into something that brings great joy and satisfaction to others.  But if it is left too long on the vine, it experiences a slow rotting from the inside out.  And ends up being discarded.

The word courage in English comes from the old French word cuer, heart.  You must do something heartfelt, reminds David Whyte, and you must do it soon.  Which begs the question, what are you doing in your life that is truly heartfelt?  What are you doing that speaks both to and from your deepest soul, expressing your inner longings and desires and God-given passion?  To do that takes courage - a movement in the heart to bold action and risk.  That's why so few people truly possess courage.  It's sometimes easier to simply maintain the status quo and not rock the boat and try to please everyone.  But that kind of heartless living ultimately leads to a busyness that little by little destroys the soul and ends up useless to blessing others.  It's not easy living with courage.

This clumsy living that moves lumbering as if in ropes through what is not done, reminds us of the awkward way the swan walks.

And to die, which is the letting go of the ground we stand on and cling to every day, is like the swan, when he nervously lets himself down into the water, which receives him gaily and which flows joyfully under and after him, wave after wave, while the swan, unmoving and marvelously calm, is pleased to be carried, each moment more fully grown, more like a king, further and further on. (Rainer Maria Wilke, "The Swan")

In commenting on this poem, applying it to a friend who comes to see him, Whyte says, "You are like Rilke's Swan in his awkward waddling across the ground; the swan doesn't cure his awkwardness by beating himself on the back, by moving faster, or by trying to organize himself better. He does it by moving toward the elemental water where he belongs. It is the simple contact with the water that gives him grace and presence. You only have to touch the elemental waters in your own life, and it will transform everything. But you have to let yourself down into those waters from the ground on which you stand, and that can be hard. Particularly if you think you might drown."

No wonder the word courage means "heart."  Much of what we do in life (and God knows we are all extremely busy doing much) has nothing or little to do with our true powers, our truest sense of self, our God-given purpose to which we feel empowered to devote our whole heart.  We often relegate those issues to impracticality ("that's just not the way life is; we can't afford that luxury!").  We judge people who try to live their heartfelt passions as neglecting real life, shirking responsibilities, trying to live in a fantasy world, or having a midlife crisis.  So we end up going through life like a swan that refuses to enter the water and simply waddles around on dry ground - awkward, expending unnecessary effort, and worst of all, not living out its true purpose.

But when the swan chooses to step into the water the whole picture changes.  We use the swan as one of the ultimate symbols of gracefulness, coining the phrase, "as graceful as a swan."  It's a picture of inspiring beauty when a swan behaves like a swan.

What are you and I robbing the world of when we don't have the courage to live the way we were designed by God to live - a life of wholehearted purpose?  What are we robbing ourselves of?    We all need something to which we can give our full powers.  And only we individually know what that is.  Our heart, our deepest soul will tell us if we stop long enough to listen to the swan song.

Thin Love or Thick Love?

[Please SHARE this blog with people who might be interested!  Hit the button on the right to subscribe or to share the post] Toni Morrison, writer and winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature, wrote these words:  "Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all."

"Thin" love.  Interesting choice of word.  What does the word "thin" imply about love?  A kind of superficiality, shallow, no real depth - which could refer to insincere or incongruous or even forced.

Consider some of the ways we might manifest a thin love:  saying we love but not really backing it up with appropriate action; giving conditionally (a quid pro quo approach - if you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours); being manipulative rather than honest and straightforward (sort of a passive-aggressive strategy); refusing to ever take off the self-protective mask, to not risk being vulnerable and truly present; and the list goes on.  Thin love.

But the context of Morrison's quotation adds another powerful dimension to the meaning.  This statement comes from her tragic novel Beloved, the epic story of a fiercely defiant runaway slave woman named Sethe.  The story is based on the true case of Margaret Garner, a renegade slave who tried to kill her children with abortions rather than allow them to be born and returned to the plantation from which she had escaped.

One of the run-aways Sethe meets, Paul D, considers Sethe's unconditional love "risky": "For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love."  The far safer way was "to love just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one."

And it is this "weak love" that Paul D tells Sethe she must accept. When Paul D tells her love is "too thick," however, Sethe insists: "Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't no love at all."

Thin love plays it safe.  Thick love takes a risk.  Thin love worries about and protects itself.  Thick love sacrifices everything for the other.  Thin love is conservative.  Thick love is freedom.  Thin love controls.  Thick love gives away.  Thin love is afraid.  Thick love is courageous.

I think of the phrase people often say, "Love is thicker than blood."  What does that mean?  It's often used in reference to being loved by someone who isn't necessarily your biological family but who loves with you a faithfulness and loyalty that you might not experience from blood family.  Thick love.  Someone who shows up for you no matter what, no strings attached.  Someone who stands beside you through thick and thin.  Someone who refuses to let you go, who has your back in every situation.  Thick love.  Feels good when you experience it, doesn't it?

This last weekend I had the privilege of flying to Portland and celebrating my prayer partner and best friend's 50th birthday.  He invited 7 of his guy friends to spend two days together, sharing stories of our journey with him, giving advice for his next 50 years, celebrating the milestone of his life and how we each have enjoyed friendship with him.  One of the things that struck me as I listened to all the guys share the meaningful parts of our experience with him and how his friendship had impacted each of us was the quality of "thick love" that manifested itself through the years.  He had chosen to stand by each of us in meaningful and supportive ways, especially during the difficult and ominous times we each had gone through.  Though others had forsaken us in our failures, he had stood by us and loved us and believed in us unconditionally.  That "thick love" was one of the huge gifts we ended up sharing and expressing our gratitude to him for.  I was reminded how important thick love is in building great friendships and relationships and how much we all hunger for this kind of love.  It's one of the greatest gifts we can give to others!

I love the way this proverb puts it:  "Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed.  If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble.  Likewise, two people lying close together can keep each other warm. But how can one be warm alone?  A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken." (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12)  Now that's thick love - the transforming effects of great friendship and relationships.  You help the other when they fall (loving support), you keep the other "warm" (pay attention to physical and emotional needs in ways that mean something to that person), and you defend the other (have each other's backs in every way).  Thick love so thick (like a triple-braided rope) that it can't be broken (solid, long term, committed).

Love is or it ain't.  Being "thick" certainly isn't the easy way (you might get attacked in your personal support of the other, you might not get all your needs met, you put your own heart on the line at times, your caring might not always be appreciated or recognized, you risk loss, you make yourself vulnerable).  But in the end, maybe it's the most fulfilling because it's the most congruent with the very nature of love (which of course is at the core of spirituality).  The way we were meant to really love and be loved.  It's the heart of divine love that is given to us unconditionally and extravagantly.  Thick love.  Toni Morrison is right:  love is either thick or not love at all.  So I'm voting for thick love.  It's changed my life.  And I want the love I give to others to be thick, too.