Mary O’Malley – Are you living with the intention to find a better version of you, a better version of your life somewhere in the future?

Are you longing for your health, your mate, your body, your house, your job, your mind, your next-door neighbor to be different than what they are? Are you wishing that you could get to the place where everything is finally okay – when you have done your life ‘right’ or gotten it together or stopped some behavior that is deemed unacceptable?

There is nothing wrong with trying to make your life better or different than what it is, but for most of us this is the main way we relate to life – always trying to get someplace better.

If you stop and look closely, you would see that this seeking never brings you the deep healing you long for because it takes you away from this moment where everything you truly long for already is!  Or, as John Lennon once said, “Life is what is happening while you are busy making other plans.”

A teacher of awakening once shared a story from early in his journey.  While sitting at a Zen retreat, the master came in the room and he banged his staff on the floor and said, “This is it!“  He did this 3 times and the man who shared this story said that at that time in his life, he didn’t have a clue about what the master was trying to convey. It took him years to finally ‘grok’ it.

This is it.  This moment where you are reading these words is it.  Enlightenment, or freedom or whatever you want to call it is being open and available to this moment.  Lift your eyes from these words and allow yourself to let this moment in, this unique and precious moment of your life.

Were you able to do this?  Maybe, maybe not.  It is difficult to pause for just a moment and let life in when we have lived so much of our lives in a doing mode rather than relaxing into the flow.

I invite you to ask yourself these questions.

“What would it be like if, for just this moment, I let go of trying to get someplace else and just be here?

What would it be like if, for just this moment, there were no problems to be solved?

What would it be like if I knew life was exactly the way it needs to be, even with all my challenges?

There is a good chance that your mind is now arguing with what has just been offered.  But notice, you are again caught in your mind.  If it is difficult to move out of the problem mode and simply be here for life, let this quote from Walt Whitman begin to work its magic:

“To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.”

Maybe you can pause and let life in for only 5 seconds a day.  But those 5 seconds count.  Even just a few seconds begin to point you to the truth that right beyond your addiction to struggle, your addiction of always trying to make life be different than what it is, there is a whole other world – life without a story laid over the top of it, life, with all its wonder, beauty, death, loss, pain and joy!

SF Source Mary O’Malley Mar 2018