To clarify perhaps a bit… we are always in the present moment… the question is – “Where is our identity” in the moment…
When we are not sleeping, our awareness is upon something… [and even during sleep]
It may be…
- on a task we are involved in at the time
- just being
- taking mind trips to the past
- planning or worrying about the future
- in an emotion state
- lost in seeing or hearing or tasting or touching or smelling
- trying to figure out something
- …or something else I haven’t thought of as yet…
This is not to impose yet another judgment and say we ‘should’ not have reactions or be identified in ego states, beliefs, thought-forms, or emotions. Our humanity comes with survival personalities and ego structure… it is a reaction and response to what our experience in this life has been from day one… plus we have been and are being bombarded by thought forms and energies at collective levels, both consciously and unconsciously…
Becoming disidentified from ‘this’ and that’ helps us to move toward a spaciousness of our true identity… of pure consciousness and will in this eternal moment… the more thought-forms and emotion baggage we bring to this moment, the more we are likely to simply react from unconscious patterns.
I recall the first time I read of a spiritual master explaining that while saying goodbye to someone, he said something like, “Goodbye my friend, I shall never see you again.” Of course he was not predicting the futures of either one. He was simply suggesting that this moment is gone forever and that it is like they both died when they parted and if their paths crossed again, they could not assume they knew who the other person was… the message being…. Do not carry your assumptions and beliefs on your back as they can blind you to what is …right NOW…
Now, there are usually certain recognitions of personal energy when we meet an old friend… and there is also the danger that we aren’t discovering our friend in this moment because we may be assuming we know who they are from what we know of their past… I don’t know about you, but I have had the experience of someone making comments to or about me that did not seem to be true or appropriate in the present moment… Rather they seemed more like leftover interpretations from the past that were being projected into the present. And of course, you and I do it as well…
One of the characteristics of a good friend or good counselor is often their ability to focus outward and to be present… to listen and sense what is happening now… The strength of the counselor is that he or she can often provide a unifying center and presence for the other person without becoming lost or identified in the emotional state or thought-forms of the other person…
Feeling states are very personal and reflect our attachments to others, to outcomes, and to desires… the feelings teach us about our beliefs and desires… they are not right or wrong… they just are…
So, being present in this moment… may begin with a feeling or even a discomfort in our body… if we stay with it and focus upon it… not making it wrong or right… just breathing into it and allowing for it’s expression, often times it will pass more quickly… When we dwell on something by replaying it in our mind….continuing to think about it, of course it will continue… and we can become attached and identified in that particular state, emotion, or pattern of behavior…
If we return to the basic sense that we are conscious beings who can actually be aware of our awareness in ways that perhaps other animals and living things are not, we realize that the consciousness of human beings is both a blessing and a curse… both heaven and hell… How many do we see around us who continue to torment themselves through replaying thoughts and memory traces… and they of course are already in their own form of ‘hell’… perhaps helped by the actions and support of others and also perhaps looking for a way to return to their true identity… And the same person can find their way home to a center of pure consciousness and Life Energy… that is the spiritual beingness of who we are… sometimes if can happen through a trauma that breaks the trance and cracks the mindset in which they have been living and identified with for most of their lives… Other times they are led by the Grace of Life in some other way…through nature… an encounter with another person… reading… or simply letting go of past and future and returning once more to the eternal present…
Most of us... for most of our lives... probably walk around in an ‘identified state’ thinking we know who we are because of this or that… because of stuff… or status… or title… or education… or association… all external things… identified as John or Joe or Sue or Jane… when really they are simply labels…
So who are we?… who are you?… in this present moment… we have the glorious title of ‘Human Being’ … What this means to me is that we are one with Being… the Source of All… and we are being Human… we are walking around in this particular model vehicle… this material form… Spirit and Matter … all in one… Human and Divine ... transitioning co-creating beings that appear as individuals yet are always One with All That Is…
And this was one more ‘ramble’ that began with where I was back then and ends up here …again… There are ways to find our way back to the present… and we must find it for ourselves… but never alone… alone only exists in fantasyland…
John Hutchinson
Sundance Center
