I just attended a weekend-long silent meditation retreat with Adyashanti. I feel such gratitude for the gift of space that I gave myself, to just be still and yielding as whatever showed up showed up. Without needing to respond to it or fix it or change it or heal it, I could just watch it, notice it, be present to it. Like a willow tree or blades of grass in the throes of a storm, bending and finding incredible strength in choosing to allow without struggling.
In the stillness that arose within me during even that short respite from the busyness of daily life I was able to see things more clearly than I can when my mind — and body — seem to be moving a mile a minute.
One of the things that I have found myself struggling with recently is “letting go”. Letting go of my mom as I knew her for most of my life, letting go of my last relationship, letting go of ideas that I have about what I want or what is true. Difficulty in letting go is the flip side of attachment: and they both stem from wanting things to be a certain way. The challenge is that life happens the way life happens, and despite our desire to control everything ~ and everyone ~ around us (sometimes in very subtle ways), people do what they do and things may not happen the way we want them to happen.
As I thought about letting go, and listened to Adyashanti describe his moment-to-moment experience as one in which each and every moment that arises also dies into the next moment, I realized that I have an opportunity to honor every situation, every interaction, every moment as the completely new and unique situation, interaction or moment that it is. What sometimes gets in the way of my doing that is my unwillingness to let go of what is already past.
Yesterday I went on a run on the trails near my home. I took a route I’ve taken many times before, and it would have been easy to just view it as the same old run that I often do. I could have gone onto autopilot (the opposite of being really present), and done my run and come home. But if I do that on a regular basis, there are several predictable outcomes:
- I eventually feel bored or disengaged
- I find myself in a rut
- I fail to see and feel and experience things that are right there in front of me
On my run, I might have missed the six deer that I saw, including the fawn that came up on the trail behind me after I stopped to watch two deer and a fawn nibbling leaves from a tree on the side of the trail. Because I ran alone, I could argue that the way I approached it only impacted my experience. That’s not actually the case, because as I continued my run after enjoying some time with the deer, I stopped to tell a few hikers coming down the trail about where the deer were. The newness with which I experienced my time on the trail impacted them too.
The ramifications of operating on autopilot or assuming that something we are experiencing now is the same as something we have already experienced can be so much worse when it comes to interacting with people. If I interact with people in the present based on how I have experienced them in the past:
- I unfairly box them in to what and how they used to be (more accurately, how I used to experience them as being)
- I don’t see who they really are in the moment
- I don’t feel open to new possibilities
- I limit the ways that I have available to me to interact with them
- I keep myself stuck
So, instead of living in the past, I am choosing to live in the present. Instead of believing whatever thoughts or beliefs or judgments I have had about life or people or experiences or situations, I choose to let go of them — to create the space to see what is right here right now, and to open to new possibilities.
As I start fresh with everyone and everything, I feel a sense of curiosity and wonder and aliveness. When I live this way, every moment feels vibrant and fresh and engaging and new. And the truth is … every moment is.
