This is Not Enough

No matter what I'm doing or what I'm experiencing in the moment, the mind wants me to believe that it's not enough. It's always prompting me to mentally chew on something, anything to take me away from what is actually happening in the moment. When I'm sitting quietly in the morning and feeling the natural stillness that the new day brings, the mind jumps in with some distraction to lure me away and tell me that the stillness is not enough. When I'm taking a walk and the light and surroundings are exquisite, the mind tries to pull me into thinking about some "problem" that needs to be thought about right now.  It covertly whispers that the "beauty and enjoyment around you is not enough and you need to think about this important problem I am bringing to your attention right now."  It's one thing to be pulled out of a pleasant moment, but when unpleasant moments arrive we have to work significantly harder to see that even this moment is enough.

Last night Guy gave an inspiring talk.  I felt the rightness of the message and was wishing for the ideas to make a new home in me. Then life brought me an instant opportunity to test it out through a tense encounter with someone.  The mind jumped in to give me its familiar reasons to get negative and disassociate with the person who offended "me." I missed the opportunity in the moment of heat to listen and understand more carefully to what the person (and life) was trying to show me. Here is what I saw after fact. The unpleasant moment is enough. Why?  Because in the disturbance lies the possibility to see something necessary that has been hidden from me to this point in my life. The very grace of God is calling out to bring me closer to His life.  The mind says " punish this person and show them where they are wrong. The heart is saying, be still and listen, now is the time to ask for understanding and compassion.  This "unpleasant" moment is just enough.

These moments of heat and the immediate resistance that come up provide the proof that I don't possess any goodness of my own. If I did, the goodness or compassion would be there to properly act. It's never my job to teach someone else when I feel they are negative or discourteous. As a matter of fact that would be the precise time to work especially hard to not add to the other's pain. Then I would have a chance to honestly see how quickly I can go from one state (one "I") to another.  One moment I am "spiritually content" and the next I am on fire. How does that happen, especially with someone who is a friend that you care about?

For me there is no better direction than these eight words; "Be Still and Know that I Am God." The only place to find out for our self the truth of these words is right now, whether the moment is pleasant or unpleasant. If we come back to our selves right now and learn to be in our body with what is taking place in this moment, we can see that the past and future only exist in imagination.  This moment is enough, pleasant or unpleasant. The beauty of entering into God's life (the reality of the moment) is that it offers exactly what we need to be in relationship with that higher life.  However, it always comes with the same entrance fee: "Not my will but thy will be done."

Here's an exercise: - Here's the heat, what's your hurry.  

When the heat of an unpleasant moment is staring you in the face, do everything in your power to come back to yourself and not hurry off into a negative blaming state. Stay there in the heat of the disturbance; try your best not to fight. Ask for higher help. This is probably the hardest of all of our spiritual work because we are so conditioned to fight for "our" rights. But wouldn't it be worth it to be free to choose what's good and right in any moment and never punish yourself or another person as long as you have breath?  This is my aim.

Doug Norby/Alive Guide Host 5/22/09