Engaging the Moment

“Where are you rushing to young man? You’re already there.” — Old Venetian Saying We’ve been conditioned to lean forward in time, to chase after the red balloons, the dangling carrots, the golden ring, the hottie, the soul mate, the ideal weight, the image of success. We hurry through time, afraid that we’ll miss it. It’s always just up ahead, that thing that always eludes your grasp. Gotta keep going so that you can keep reaching toward it. When we are goal oriented, rather than path oriented, we live in a state of chronic time sickness. We hurry distractedly through time trying to get someplace we think we see up ahead. Meanwhile, the time we are living in, the nowever, is degraded by our trying to hurry through it to get to where we think we want to be. But no matter how much we try to hurry through time, we are still always in the nowever. Our lives unfold and people, places and things all change, but it’s always us in the nowever. If we are preoccupied with the current people, places and things, or the ones that we hope to find in the future, then we neglect those [...]

(Warning: This card employs mixed and exploding metaphor technology. Be prepared for an amalgam of casino and metallurgical metaphors.) Life requires skills of both detachment and engagement. One must strike while the iron is hot, and a life well lived provides molten metal glowing in the forge of each day. Every day you are provided molten metal that you need to engage with and shape with your will, creativity, inspiration, perseverance, and whatever else you got. But molten metal does not usually stay molten and in your particular forge. Once shaped, it cools and hardens and becomes a particular thing which may be taken away from your forge. <i> Croupier</i> is a brilliantly done, contemporary film noir with an anti-heroic protagonist who is a croupier, of course, and quite cynical about the ways of the world and human nature. The one virtue I remember him having, though, is a shrewd card player’s sense of when to hold them, and when to fold them. What has stayed with me from that movie is the one line of truly soulful wisdom that the croupier states as his life philosophy: “Hold on tightly, let go lightly.” The most poignant way this principle applies [...]

(Warning: This card employs mixed and exploding metaphor technology. Be prepared for an amalgam of casino and metallurgical metaphors.) Life requires skills of both detachment and engagement. One must strike while the iron is hot, and a life well lived provides molten metal glowing in the forge of each day. Every day you are provided molten metal that you need to engage with and shape with your will, creativity, inspiration, perseverance, and whatever else you got. But molten metal does not usually stay molten and in your particular forge. Once shaped, it cools and hardens and becomes a particular thing which may be taken away from your forge. Croupier is a brilliantly done, contemporary film noir with an anti-heroic protagonist who is a croupier, of course, and quite cynical about the ways of the world and human nature. The one virtue I remember him having, though, is a shrewd card player’s sense of when to hold them, and when to fold them. What has stayed with me from that movie is the one line of truly soulful wisdom that the croupier states as his life philosophy: “Hold on tightly, let go lightly.” The most poignant way this principle applies in [...]

This is a propitious time to pay great attention to detail. For some, particularly introverts, it easy to lose track of details while cognitive energy is being spent lavishly in inner worlds. Meanwhile, details of the mundane physical world are neglected or missed until they bite us in sensitive areas. At other times the inner world is dominated by what some call psychic entropy, looping negative thought tapes, volatile emotions and obsessions, and this causes dangerous neglect of the details of the outer world. It can be a grounding practice of mindfulness to sometimes give your focus to attention to detail, and often this is a practical necessity. Transitional times — when, for example, you are about to leave your house and an inner dialogue about such and such is in the foreground of your mind — put that inner dialogue on hold for a few moments and check the details — did I turn the stove off? Did I bring my wallet, and everything I need for the next destination? Also, when psychic entropy is attempting to dominate you, the small world can be a way to resist the dark undertow. There is a very useful principle:If in doubt, [...]

“Yesterday is ashes. Tomorrow wood; Only today the fire burns brightly.” – Native American saying What you have to work with in the present may seem weird, unexpected, incomplete, but those are just ego judgments. Your job is always to work with what is present in the moment, whatever it is. Engage what the moment offers and the fire of life will burn brightly. Slowing down may allow you to appreciate the beauty of the moment. There is an old Venetian saying: “Where are you rushing to, young man? You are already there.” The replenishing feminine element in our lives is often so lacking that we seek to race through time till we can get to some future oasis, which often proves illusory. For example, someone works a job they hate counting down to quitting time, weekend or vacation. Or we seek an imagined future when we are at our ideal weight, have the perfect lover, dream house, wealth and a more glowing life. Fulfillment projected into the future forever eludes us. We need to find our fulfillment through engagement with the present moment. Live well today.

“Yesterday is ashes. Tomorrow wood; Only today the fire burns brightly.” – Native American saying What you have to work with in the present may seem weird, unexpected, incomplete, but those are just ego judgments. Your job is always to work with what is present in the moment, whatever it is. Engage what the moment offers and the fire of life will burn brightly. Slowing down may allow you to appreciate the beauty of the moment. There is an old Venetian saying: “Where are you rushing to young man? You are already there.” The replenishing feminine element in our lives is often so lacking that we seek to race through time till we can get to some future oasis, which often proves illusory. For example, someone works a job they hate counting down to quitting time, weekend or vacation. Or we seek an imagined future when we are at our ideal weight, have the perfect lover, dream house, wealth and a more glowing life. Fulfillment projected into the future forever eludes us. We need to find our fulfillment through engagement with the present moment. Live well today.

Mindfulness is an empowered stance from which to meet the world. Mindfulness means to be as present as possible with what you are experiencing. A classic mindfulness exercise is to eat one raisin, first looking at it carefully, noticing every convolution and variation in surface texture, feeling it with your fingers, smelling it, feeling its texture with your tongue, biting into it and sensing the release of sugar, noticing how the sweetness registers differently on different parts of the tongue and so forth. Mindfulness of posture is quite an engaging and beneficial practice. Being mindful of what is happening interpersonally, moment-by-moment, and also the perturbations moment-by-moment within your own psyche are great subjects for mindfulness. Driving, being out in nature, it is hard to think of an activity or state of being human that would not benefit from mindfulness.

Now is your eternal birthday. “Yesterday is ashes. Tomorrow wood; Only today the fire burns brightly.” – Native American saying What you have to work with in the present may seem weird, unexpected, incomplete, but those are just ego judgments. Your job is always to work with what is present in the moment, whatever it is. Engage what the moment offers and the fire of life will burn brightly. Slowing down may allow you to appreciate the beauty of the moment. There is an old Venetian saying: “Where are you rushing to young man? You are already there.” The replenishing feminine element in our lives is often so lacking that we seek to race through time till we can get to some future oasis, which often proves illusory. For example, someone works a job they hate counting down to quitting time, weekend or vacation. Or we seek an imagined future when we are at our ideal weight, have the perfect lover, dream house, wealth and a more glowing life. Fulfillment projected into the future forever eludes us. We need to find our fulfillment through engagement with the present moment. Live well today.

This is a time to go forward into new possibilities. Shakespeare wrote: “There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.” This is high tide to approach something — a new situation, relationship, or inner change. If there is an open window of opportunity that your deepest intuition supports, then this is a propitious time to approach.

Ego attempting to schedule, organize, and otherwise control the Tao. Man proposes, but the Tao disposes. Scheduling and planning should be undertaken as strategic activities we engage in within the present, but with an awareness that future developments may overwrite our plans. It is not our job to prestructure the future. Soil with a lot of manure in it produces abundant crops; water that is too clear has no fish. Therefore, enlightened people should maintain the capacity to accept impurities and should not be solitary perfectionists. ——Huanchu Daoren (16th Century Taoist)