Staying present is a challenge sometimes. My ego wants everything yesterday. Just recently I think I’ve begun the process of accepting the journey. I’m 39, no where close to being a millionaire or a big shot. I’m single, probably won’t have kids, and for good reason with my emotional maturity needing a lot of growth. I’m recovering from addiction and codependency. I just got my inner child to trust me again. I have a great career which I love and hate. I just now am beginning to trust my intuition, setting boundaries, and cutting cords (with people and with energies not conducive to my well-being). Wow, all this I, which yes is still important; but with a whole world turning with other people’s wills, blessings to be had, and trials and tribulations to endure and grow from, it’s no surprise how not mindful I have been. I hear in recovery if I have one foot in the past and one in the future, I’m pissing all over the day. That is true for someone that obsesses. But I can’t forget the past – it made me who I am today, and I can only move forward from a place of honesty. The future isn’t here yet, but I can hope, aspire, and set goals. Truth is a matter of perception that changes on the regular as I learn and experience new things, but I have to stay in the present to fully embrace those things for what they are now. Now what it was way back when and not for entirely for the future, because what I think my future should be might not even be what I want when the time comes. What does this have to do with mindfulness? Prejudice and judgement. We have them. We all do it. Taking inventory of our world (let me be clear – our world or my world, but not the world) is how we survive and decide what our next move is. But I can really screw that up if I’m applying emotionally charged history to the present, adding story to the present reality which can really distort my perception. My sponsor suggested to me the power of “ok,” as in saying “ok” to any real thing, real as in happening in the now, not to the now in reference to the yesteryear that isn’t now and not the magical illusion of the future that isn’t happening now. Another sponsor want has me meditating in silence for 15 minutes a day, which I can do better at. Part of staying in the now is using positive language that isn’t overly emotionally charged. As an addict/alcoholic/codependent having always found a way to not be present, I only know how to operate in an extreme of fight or flight – triggered reacting. I feel old traumas, bad experiences, misunderstandings as a result of that and drugs and alcohol helped facilitate poor responses to life; which is why so many like me feel and appear maladjusted to life. We’re great survivors, but terrible at living. The power of pause, ok, letting go, grounding, shielding, cutting cords, walking away and coming back level headed, all things I’ve never fully committed to practicing till now. I sucks after being sober for 11.5 years and allowing your own ego’s insanity tear you down and you “go back out.” I had to stop there for a second a cry, which is good because my ego needs deflation to be right-sized and properly fit for the right now. Writing has always been a therapeutic meditation for me. It takes the hamster wheel in my head and flattens it out to a linear track so I can move forward into clarity without my ego looping back to bullshit or getting distracted from the truth. I have to remember to invite my Higher Power in before I do it. I ought to invite my Higher Power in before anything when I think about it. All this has to do with being mindful. Everyone and everything around me is a mirror. I truly don’t know person in front of me, or know the place I’m standing before. My perception of my reality is based on past experiences and mental calculations (judgments) to define what in front of me in the now is. But that’s part of the problem. If my life sucked, then life sucks, reality sucks. But it doesn’t have to. There’s another side to every coin. The now is dark for people that made poor choices up till the present. But I don’t have to keep making poor choices. I can practice positive thinking, even then that is dangerous in that it can invoke expectations. Reality just is. The car that cut me off might not be an asshole; he might be bleeding out on the way to hospital or rushing to a family member in the hospital because he or she might die; or he’s actually a really nice guy unaware of how fast he’s going or is simply in a rush for no reason and has no beef with me. Life is happening, but with everybody experiencing life, then life isn’t happening to me; it’s just happening. My life doesn’t suck; it’s not falling apart, I’m just experiencing effect my actions produced or even then life can move just as unaware of me sometimes like the guy who cut me off, just like the acorn that fell out of the sky and banged on my windshield. I can meditate, in silence or not; the monkey mind in either meditation will produce images in my minds eye that can be distracting me from my purpose if I let it. The universe is never still, so why would my mind be? Ah, I think I can forgive myself more now for not having a still image when I practice creative visualization (I can easily keep an image, but it likes to vibrate, slightly get bigger or smaller outside my control, but it’s still there)….interesting, I just tried to stare at something, and I notice how my eyes feel like their vibrating as my brain, I assume, is processing the everything in sight, including colors and depth perception, but I keep all other thoughts out, not let a single one in – something I achieved the first time I got sober when I prayed the crave feeding, fleeting thoughts of an addict away; if I wasn’t reading or doing something then to distract myself from myself, I would just focus on a single thing in front of me till it passed (usually riding in a car till I got out). Anyway, I digress, but that realization I just had was neat. Back to mindfulness. During meditation I don’t allow emotional attachment to the images that crop up, unless that is the goal like in a trauma mediation; I just acknowledge and bring my attention back to the present – focusing on breath or visualization. What I gained from this is that from not reacting to the random thoughts or images during meditation, I in turn don’t react or at least react less to life as it is happening. The images in my mind weren’t actually doing anything to me, so why should life happening be any different? So, I naturally stop reacting. It takes practice. And often I don’t want to do it. I’m not sure if it’s because my inner child wants attention or that my ego doesn’t want change. I either allowed some things to happen to me in the past and didn’t resolve them in a healthy manner or I coped with abusing myself with drugs and alcohol and thus didn’t grow further and develop for the years that I was using. It’s quite reasonable that my inner child wouldn’t trust me and thus fight any reprogramming because of anti-programming I allowed with drugs and alcohol for so long. Trauma meditations help. Again, I digress. So, what is happening during this non-reacting? I’m no longer flexing my emotionally charged history of bad experiences onto other or life in general. The same should go for good present times too – I’m not degrading them via perceptions based in my dark past, and I’m also not possibly cheapening the reality or others’ present reality with my good history because they aren’t me. Sure, I can inspire and lift people up with my word and guide with my wisdom, but that doesn’t mean that its pertinent to the present now or another person’s journey. I guess it’s possible to be a good person and have good intentions and still fuck some shit up or fuck someone else’s life up. The road to hell was….you get it. Hell, who’s to say my intentions are correct if my perception of the now is distorted or my understanding of my past was delusional? So, for now, pause, ok, release the hang ups and prejudices, stop adding story to the current circumstances. Be open-minded to the deeper meaning of things, but grounded enough to stand in the present now that the fat ass acorn that started a new star on my windshield isn’t punishment, life happening to me, or God telling me to pay attention (that is only true, in my opinion, if an acorn or something is hitting my windshield every single day). I remember my first sponsor told me I was not allowed to think for 6 months. What is that? Being mindful. Kind of ironic when I seems like the wording should be mind-empty. But I do remember the 4th dimension of existence hits pretty I think 30+ days in of not thinking for 6 months, because your mind is no longer clouded with expectations, obsessions, or worry.