Back to the Present

Sitting here in bed with a cup of tea before 7, noticing the coolness in the air on my skin. One degree outside, frosty and sunshine. I’m pondering about the fear of my own feelings and the thoughts too. Sometimes still a resistance to full dropping into them at times.

That’s where repetition comes in to assist. New habits require much of that initially. It reassures all the ‘parts’ that it’s safe for starters. And new neural pathways take a little time to establish.

Plus being fully present has an intensity of energy frequency that the density of matter seems to resist union with initially.

In the feelings just now though. This practice of dropping into feelings is a perfect accompaniment to being fully present in the here and now. My practises, let me remind myself here –

– Drop into the physically felt feelings inside the body. Notice and clenching areas, tightness….often located in the throat and solar plexus. Breathe from low down while doing this. Allow the felt sensation of the emotion to be experienced. Send it the message that you want to be friends and won’t chase it away. Particularly effective is imagining a perimeter space around it to allow it to breathe a bit and move around if it wants.

That last bit my therapy clients report liking a lot. I do it after a good while of us sitting together being with and in our feelings in the body. And it can be a catalyst for a fairly quick release of that tightness/contraction feeling.

– Focus attention on what is actually present right now. Use the senses to help bring attention into the present moment. What is being seen right now, heard….feel the weight of the body on the feet.

– Use breathing too, deep breathing from the abdomen calms the nervous system. A calm nervous system creates fewer thoughts, as it’s not feeling under threat. The mind kicks in when threat is perceived to try and find the threat and present solutions.

– slow riiiiiiiight down. Almost do things in slow motion and notice everything happening in the present.

– online consumption of almost only uplifting or insightful material. Only occasional for ways into the main stream media. No normal tv watching, just carefully chosen dramas and films. Using wise YouTube talks as a support

– if thoughts are racing, then a mantra along with conscious breathing is used

Some part invested firmly in a belief that worry somehow keeps me safe, and is at the same time jittery about what horrors about the future the mind might whip up for me, with the ensuing emotional fallout of anxiety and stress. Addicted to thought and also afraid of it. What a situation.

– hand on chest and sometimes on tummy too, and ‘I love you, you’re safe, I’m with you’ or whatever combination comes to mind from my list or not. Being kind.

What will happen if I just keep coming back to the present and just stay here. It’s all just fine here. Comfy, quiet, peaceful. Nothing going wrong. No danger at all…and there never seems to be.

I still take action here and now. Yesterday a lot of work and communications and driving and an entire spreadsheet of costings. Normally anxiety provoking was just a thing I was doing. It’s interesting for me to note that I did the costing for the next project yesterday almost effortlessly. It’s normally an onerous task. One I usually get very anxious about. It was like a game. Also I did the final costing for the current project. So effective action is still being taken as required in this here and now surrender experiment.

I’m playing brinkmanship here, the divine choreography designed for emancipation and expansion is. Last week of work, next one not yet agreed firmly. Every reason to be terrified. So that familiar uncertainty that normally drives me nearly to despair with stress and anxiety is present. Full uncertainty. Yet here I am feeling very relaxed. I can feel the fears burning and they generate an electrical force as they dissolve, which has a unique intensity and energy signature of its own. What is that about?

As fears arise and are given over, they are replaced by love. A love that is always present arises, free to flow. That choice not to fear, to notice and not invest in the belief of the fear, is a magical alchemical formula. This is a choice to be made a 1000 times a day. Will I be here where I am anyway, or will I live in my imagination in the future? I keep on choosing the present and the mind keeps trying to get my attention to come into its spell of fear.

Oh hello there little fearful thought, I see you, let me show you out through the back door. Don’t invite it to tea where it will give birth to a big story.

It’s actually quite a challenge to live like this since barely anyone else does. Fearlessness is only supported in a few small circles, it’s not exactly ‘supported’ socially or in the media or anything. Fear informs most people’s choices, and investment in the belief that fear keeps us safe is widespread. I see the negative effect of that with some of not most therapy clients, and of course in my experience too.

And also other people can be a help too in several ways. I was pondering about how they hear my story over time. How often my regular friends have heard me in the throws of fear thoughts about not having work lined up. It’s such a familiar story to them, it’s rather boring and pointless as each time they see me I’m still alive and everything is just fine. They observe the repetition loop I go into about some fears, while for me when I get temporarily lost in those fears, it’s all an impending disaster about to happen. So seeing how they observe can lend a bit of objectivity to this story.

In the present insights and answers come. What to do next, why such and such….it’s interesting to access that.

‘Why have I not been able to communicate this really deep level to my son? ‘Because it’s his journey to find this wavelength and if he is too primed prematurely with the descriptive words, then it can lessen the impact as he might think he already knows it all since he is familiar with the language.

Wow nice answer.

I’ve been putting prompts into Midjourney to see what art the machine produces in response, to see how much it ‘knows’. I find this fascinating.

‘You are the Absolute Totality, beyond within or without. Anything changeful is just an appearance within the unchanging vastness of the I Am.’

Anonymous quote from my Twitter feed produces this….

Today is pretty open and free. There’s sun shining outside right now. There’s a meeting with my supervisor this afternoon, and an evening Eckhart Tolle book group meeting online tonight reading the Power of Now.

And a couple in the style of Hornel