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.

The Fruitfulness of the Moment - H.Miller, V.Frankl

Henry Miller's "The Wisdom of the Heart"

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/10/09/the-wisdom-of-the-heart-henry-miller/

The art of living is based on rhythm — on give and take, ebb and flow, light and dark, life and death. By acceptance of all aspects of life, good and bad, right and wrong, yours and mine, the static, defensive life, which is what most people are cursed with, is converted into a dance, ‘the dance of life,’ metamorphosis. One can dance to sorrow or to joy; one can even dance abstractly. … But the point is that, by the mere act of dancing, the elements which compose it are transformed; the dance is an end in itself, just like life. The acceptance of the situation, any situation, brings about a flow, a rhythmic impulse towards self-expression. To relax is, of course, the first thing a dancer has to learn. It is also the first thing a patient has to learn when he confronts the analyst. It is the first thing any one has to learn in order to live. It is extremely difficult, because it means surrender, full surrender.

For the awakened individual, however, life begins now, at any and every moment; it begins at the moment when he realizes that he is part of a great whole, and in the realization becomes himself whole. In the knowledge of limits and relationships he discovers the eternal self, thenceforth to move with obedience and discipline in full freedom.

An attempt, in short, to arrive at a total grasp of the universe, and thus keep man anchored in the moving stream of life, which embraces known and unknown. Any and every moment, from this viewpoint, is therefore good or right, the best for whoever it be, for on how one orients himself to the moment depends the failure or fruitfulness of it.

Real love is never perplexed, never qualifies, never rejects, never demands. It replenishes, by grace of restoring unlimited circulation. It burns, because it knows the true meaning of sacrifice. It is life illuminated.

http://www.raptitude.com/2013/10/6-helpful-reminders-for-the-overwhelmed-person/

 ... Viktor Frankl’s great discovery — that nobody can take away your freedom to choose your way of relating to your circumstances. Wherever you are, you can do something to make the rest of the day better than it would otherwise be, and that means you are not helpless. No matter how small the action, once you see you are capable of improving your position, the feeling of helplessness cannot survive unless you want it to.