We make life so much harder on ourselves than we need. The suffering our minds put us through…so often concerned about what will be or what happened that we are rarely conscious and aware of what is right in front of us. Right now, as I’m writing this post, my mind is:
- planning a list of evening chores
- reminding me to pay the water bill
- considering the picture of my van that is soon to come in the mail, along with a request for a donation to the county government
- wondering what mood the kids are going to be in tonight and if everyone will eat their vegetables without a fuss
Wow! That’s a fun list! The alternative to this mental mayhem (which varies moment by moment in its content but is almost exclusively doom and gloom) is singular and constant
- God
The Nature of the Present Moment
When we pull back from our wild mind and are strictly in the present moment, we are with the one and only thing that is real and eternal: God Himself.
It’s in the feeling of the wind on my face.
The look of curiosity in my dog’s eyes.
The sound of birdsong.
The laughter of a child.
The feeling of that paper with that photo of my van in my hand.
The joy of giving that mandatory donation to the county government.
The thing is…with a few rare exceptions (try embracing the present moment with a pounding headache and you will find it more bearable for sure, but still painful), the present moment is always good. And when we stay in the present moment, we soak in more of that goodness. We take in more of God’s grace.
Letting it Go
The journey from mental mayhem to inner peace is often rather circuitous and quite lengthy. There are some rare individuals who let go of the mind in a single instant of revelation and never turned back. Byron Katie and Ramana Maharshi are two notable examples (I highly recommend reading the works of either). For the rest of us, it takes being shown day by day that what our mind “thinks” we want is not really want our souls want.
One day at a time, try the following:
- As often as you can, see if you can catch when your mind drifts away from the present moment.
- Inquire if your thoughts are making you happy. (The answer will be no, if you are honest with yourself. Even excitement about a future event holds some level of anxiety with it).
- See if you can relax your mind and just be, if only for a split second. Remind yourself that God wants you to be happy and the only time you can actually be happy or ever will be happy is “now”. No other time exists.
- Repeat
The Kingdom of Heaven
With each turning of the attention inward and the releasing of our hold on our thoughts, the Holy Spirit renews our minds (Romans 12:2). We give up all that we cling to and embrace the only treasure worth having (Matthew 13). The peace of God.
This is the kingdom of heaven, where the will of God (to be love to everyone you meet) happens.
This is the promised “peace that passes all understanding” (Philippians 4:7).
This is what it means to come home to our true selves and a right relationship with our creator.
Get out of the head and into the heart. Release the attempts to control the future, feel guilty about the past, and plan for what is to come better than God Himself.
I’ve been down that road enough to know trying to fix the past and control the future doesn’t work. Have you? And, as we slowly let go of our hold on “our way”, day by day, God will show us heaven in the here and now. It has little to do with our circumstances and everything to do with our perception of it; our awareness of God’s presence in the here and now.