It’s Sunday night and I have a busy week ahead. I had a busy week last week! Moments filled with diary appointments, clients to see, talks to give, training sessions to complete and friends to catch up with… and in between that, all those other ‘things to do’ to ensure the smooth running of my life!
This is a familiar story I know, particularly in the society we live in. Everywhere around us, people are ill and exhausted from lives that are packed too full, never a moment to stop – all moments filled. On one level this can be wonderful, so many experiences, so much excitement. I love the movement and challenge, and yet recently I went to Spain for a month to write. I passed the time very happily with very few moments filled! I regenerated and came back rested and healthy. That may be of course why at the moment I still feel well within the demands of my current life-style. But perhaps more profoundly, the real answer and the simple answer and yet so often the most difficult to execute, is to be in the moment, with the emphasis on ‘be’. If you can be truly present in each moment then it is possible to manage yourself in each moment, to be conscious of any upset inside you, whether it be physical or emotional.
Being conscious means that you can deal with and seek to understand whatever is going on at that moment. Anything that is not understood will keep coming back again and again! So seek to understand your responses and reactions. See if you can seek to understand what are they saying to you.
Maybe stress and exhaustion happen because we find it so hard to be in each moment enough to fully appreciate and live it. We are so often responding to and therefore held by our past experiences and the meaning we have attached to events and conversations throughout our lives, and in turn we are often fearful of the future, perhaps because we haven’t understood our past. And yet we rush towards it, missing the moment!
If we were able to stay completely present, I believe that striving towards our goals and dreams would be far more enjoyable, because by staying with the process, we would gradually become conscious of what hold us back. By staying in each step we would become aware of our discomforts and fears and so ease them at the time, in this way the destination arrives as a result of having gained in self knowledge and with the benefits that will bring for our future.
Sometimes being busy can be a way of distracting from ourselves from our own needs, our own process, of acknowledging who we are in that moment. It can allow us to stop listening to what we really want and instead can encourage us to follow everyone else, simply answering the demands of our families, jobs, the expectations of our society and of our culture.
If we become conscious of our own process as an individual within all the groups that we operate within and of the symbolic nature of what is often going on for us, we come to realise that ‘everything happens for a reason’. If we work at becoming conscious of this within the activity of being busy, then we have the opportunity to be our authentic selves in each minute of each day. This will enable us to remain at ease and in touch with the still point within us, which remains still whatever is going on at the outer levels. It will also offer us the chance to connect more fully with others. I believe that as human beings we all want to connect with one another, but that unless we know who we are and what we really want, unless we are fully present and centred in each moment; then we are more often than not trying to be accepted for the ‘act’ we are playing out, our busy distracted self… which of course leads to feeling more and more disconnected.
Within the still point, within our real centre there can be the possibility of the deep relaxation that comes with fully acknowledging each moment. Then there is no need to feel too busy or to become too stressed. It becomes far easier to stop and to say no to the ever-increasing demands on our time, to that extra thing or things. It becomes easier to know what our needs are and to see the effect of our actions and choices on our health, at all levels: emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually. It becomes more possible to look after ourselves and to start to lead lives that really do bring satisfaction, fulfillment and happiness. But first, it is necessary to become conscious of the moment, to start to take responsibility for acknowledging how we are really feeling, and to then take steps to live that moment with the respect it deserves – because we will never have the opportunity again.