Bach Remedies and short, meaningful reads as gentle reminders that meaning, beauty and joy are within us.

The Bach Flower Remedies revitalize, restore the inner well being, help us in bringing to light the positive qualities we possess and in overcoming fears, depressions and states alike.


Let your soul grow

Monday 5 May 2014

The Fruitfulness of the Moment - another perspective

In the same vein as the previous post there is David Cain's great post: It's okay to be here


http://www.raptitude.com/2014/05/okay-to-be-here

You can always be where you are (and indeed nothing else is possible.) The real issue is learning to consciously allow yourself to be exactly where you are, including any of the parts that you would prefer to be different.

This is a news flash to some: It’s okay to experience unpleasant feelings. It’s okay for things to happen that you don’t want to happen. It is possible to notice these things happening and consciously allow them to be there. And it makes a huge difference to how traumatic or not-so-bad the experience ends up being. It may still be unpreferable or unpleasant, but it stops being awful. All different kinds of pain can become manageable if you can let them be there while they’re there.

In the West at least, most of us receive zero training on the value (and even the possibility) of consciously allowing our current experience to be what it is. Just a little bit of regular mindfulness or meditation practice can make this fundamental skill into a habit.

Letting the moment simply be what it is is altogether different from wanting it to be that way, or refusing to do something about it, if there is indeed something you can do. This applies to so many everyday moments that can be awful if we don’t let them be what they are: waiting in line, not knowing whether you passed an exam, being in the presence of misbehaving kids.

The key to allowing yourself to be here is locating that aspect of the present moment that you most want to be different — which always seems to amount to a feeling of some kind. For example, it would feel perfectly okay to not know if you passed the exam if you didn’t feel any anxiety in response to that not-knowing. The unpleasant/unpreferable part is the anxiety, not the not-knowing.

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