When you're stuck in a moment you can't get out of

So much of the talk about living in the present or making every moment a meditation can sound pretty glib to those whose present moment feels something like the U2 song, "Stuck In a Moment You Can't Get Out Of." What if the present moment is not a very nice place to be?  What if you don't want to be here, now?  What if you feel downright stuck and wish you could be anywhere but here?

In response to a recent post on this site, Linda asks, "Do you have advice on how to experience the gift of the moment when you really prefer not to be in it at all?"

For people who feel stuck in such a moment, I'm pretty guarded about giving advice.  Companionship, empathy . . . yes.  But advice will probably ring hollow to those whose present moment may be full of physical or emotional pain, despair, loss, fear, or debilitating mental distress.

I can say this much.  I've known my share of moments I'd prefer not to have lived through.  I'd have given just about anything to be anywhere but stuck in a moment I couldn't get out of.  I also know that there was no getting through those moments in any other way than living through them.  Wishing I could be anywhere else was natural, even understandable, but not very helpful. By wanting to be somewhere else I evacuated myself from the only place I could really be.

The only way through such moments is through them . . . as frightening as that may be.

Here are three practices I've learned from my own painful dwelling in such moments--ABCs for living in a moment you can't get out of:

1. Awareness.  Take stock of yourself.  Check in with your body, your blood pressure, signs of anxiety.  Awareness is the gift of freedom from being hooked by a past you cannot fix and a future you cannot control.  What you have is this moment.  Like it or not, it's the only moment you've got.

2. Breathe. When we want to be elsewhere, your breath becomes shallow.  Conscious breathing is the best way for you to move into awareness.  Breathe.  In and out.  It's is a spiritual and bodily practice that can't help but pulls you back into this moment.

3. Compassion. Reach out to yourself as if you are a friend in need.  You're apt to show others more compassion than you do yourself.  Compassion requires awareness of your real situation and whispers to of grace, saying, "All shall be well."

For a helpful article by neurologist, Dr. Robert Scaer on trauma, see The Precarious Present: Why is it so hard to stay in the present? Especially the final section and it's practical suggestions.

Can I experience more than fleeting moments?

About my last post, Struggling to live in the present, Joe and Linda ask good questions about experiences common to so many of us.  I'll address Joe's today, and Linda's later. He asks: Is it possible to have more that a brief moment during the day to enjoy being in the presence of our creator?

The experience Joe asks about is common to nearly all of us. We may have brief glimpses of real beauty and wonder, then live oblivious to it all in the push and pull of daily life until we collapse at day's end--too numb to seek God at all. We're not cloistered monks. We live beyond the sacred wall, amid the hustle and bustle of urban life. Few of us can change that, and there's no reason we should. But we can change is how we experience the busyness.

Is busyness an obstacle to enjoying the presence of our creator, or is our active life an opportunity to open more fully to the Presence Who is always present?

A true Christian spirituality (as with Buddhism, Sufism, and other spiritual traditions) affirms the latter.  The former view will leave us frustrated, but the latter awakens us to the presence of God who is always right here, right now.  The present is, frankly, all we have.  And the presence is where we encounter God.  But we're often so fixated on the past, or anxious about the future that we're anywhere but the place (the only place!) we can meet God.

I'm in favor of periods of stillness and silence and solitude. Gobs of it. But I'm not in favor of using stillness as an escape. Moments of ecstasy in stillness or rapture before a sunset merely makes it possible for us to live with more attentiveness to the Presence in times chaos and fear and noise.

So . . .

• Take care not to experiencing the presence of God as an either/or thing.
• Awaken now.
• If you're harassed and harried right now, if this moment is an ugly one and you don't want to be here now, acknowledge it; wake up to that truth.
• Awareness of my experience of the present is the key to living in the present.

Struggling to live in the present?

There's plenty that can keep us locked in the past or fixated on the future, anywhere but the present.

Some of you are asking (especially on Facebook) if it's really possible to live intentionally, here and now in the midst our busy lives--in a traffic jam, working in a chaotic office, tending a pair of screaming infants, arguing a case in a crowded courtroom.  Can we do it late in life when our minds feel a bit more like sieves, and our old habits seem hard to break?

Yes, we can.  In any place and at any age we can wake up to the gift of each moment.

That said, there are forces at work in us that keep us everywhere but the present.  And we must be honest about them.

We try to sit still.  We seek God in wordless prayer.  We try to focus on one task as we sit at our computers.  We try to be present before the one we love but our brains think they're a Twitter account with 10,000 friends--a new tweet arrives with each new moment and we can't seem to resist a quick glance.

If you can't stay in the present, congratulations, you're part of the human race.

• You're not weak.
• You're not spiritually inferior.
• And you don't lack that prayer-gene that your friend seemed get in spades.

Welcome to the journey.  Learning to live in the present is gonna take some work.

Love above all

What do we intend?  Only love.  The aim and fruit of an intentional life is love—divine and human.  The goal and harvest of a spiritually awakened life is participation in love.  When we love, all of life is prayer. Of course, difficulties and difficult people will try to tell you that love’s too squishy, soft, weak.

Don’t you believe them.

If the cross of Christ has anything to do with love (and it does), there’s nothing weak about love.  This is one reason I’m persuaded by true Christianity.  In Jesus we see the intention of God.  Love.  Love alone.  Love above all.  And love is the ultimate power—irrepressible, unconquerable, eternal.  Through Jesus we know love—not merely as aspect of God, but as the very nature of God—for “God is love” (1 John 4.8). Love is not an emotion we share, nor is it an emotion of God—something like glue that holds the Trinity together.  Love is uncreated.  It is the divine energy that continually inflames our hearts and unites us to God by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Through the Spirit we actually participate in the heart of God, the Source of all things, which is Love.

So your intention, the concentration of your life around love, gathers your energy to this one thing.  You intend to—

• Awaken to the power of love.
• Look a friend in the eye . . . and hold it.
• Speak words that are heart deep.
• Listen without judging or hurrying.
• Smile when you’re tempted to frown.
• Begin that unwelcome task you’ve been avoiding.
• Walk in the rain . . . slowly.

And as you do each thing, gather your heart into the Heart of Love, which is the Source of all things.

Say deep within: “I intend to love in this moment as if there were no other.”

And God will send you grace upon the wings of your simple, earnest prayer.

"Give me an example of focused intention"

Intention. Awakening our spiritual attention. A few of you have asked questions on this site or on Facebook about Monday's post.  Trish writes: "Ok, please give me an example of focused intention. I'm trying to follow you." In my blog post, Jim Brannan, a pilot (who thankfully knows what it means to stay focused on the task of flying an aircraft rather than letting his mind drift to a zillion other things) says intention is a matter of "focusing our attention, sustaining our awareness, checking in with God when our blood pressure goes up, or our anxiety increases. It means being aware of our inner lives in the midst of distraction."

To do this, here is what I'm doing right now...

1. I'm writing to you.
2. I am no where else but here.
3. I keep focusing on these words I'm putting on the page.
4. I keep myself thinking about you and the desire you have to live intentionally.
5. As thoughts come (as they inevitably do) about the emails that beg for my attention, or the meeting later today that will require some energy, or the painful experience that for one reason or another I still cling to, I keep returning with each distraction to this moment, and to the task right before me.

No matter what you do, this the key work you have to do. And it can revolutionize whatever you do: talking with a friend, balancing the checkbook, driving your car.

But intention does not mean perfection. It means that when my dog barks as he did just now wanting to go out, my attention shifts. I'm drawn away from the task. I get up, and open the door, and as I walk, my mind flits to a dozen other things. I recognize them, and invite myself back from the need to follow them. I sit back down and finish this little note.

I could do all this unintentionally, or I can focus my attention, direct my mind, concentrate my thoughts into the heart. Breathe. I can live with awareness and intention. And I'll be a lot happier.