The Only Place I Am Is There

“One time, one meeting.”

It was mesmerizing. The color. The lines. The contrast. It was one of those photos I wish I had taken myself. But I didn’t need to own it to be able to fully enjoy it.

I just needed to see it.

Quite often I find myself alone in nature. A short hike though the woods, a long walk on a winter’s beach. The isolation is restorative and at some point I will inevitably attempt to capture the beauty of the natural world surrounding me in a photograph.

Looking through the view finder takes me to a place I’ve spent much of my life trying to find. The present moment. In the view finder a moment is frozen. I scan everything before pressing the button. The lines, the light, the color, the texture, the noise. Every detail in front of me is seen and assessed. I can adjust or decide to capture it exactly as it is. But in that moment, the only place I am is there.

When you discover the present moment you also discover how fleeting it is.

“Ichigo ichie” is a Japanese expression often translated to mean “one time, one meeting”. This and every moment is a singular moment in time. It cannot be relived exactly as it was. Therein lies its Continue reading “The Only Place I Am Is There” →

Redirecting The Momentum Of Thought

The crew aimed their cannon at the top of the mountain. After a few minor adjustments, the trigger was pulled and the artillery shell landed in the deep snow.

Avalanche.

It started slowly, the initial subtle movement gaining velocity and momentum as the snow intensified its descent as it violently crashed down the mountain.

Reminds me of how my thoughts can work at times. Especially when the thoughts turn negative.

Sometimes one initial impact of negativity creates a downward spiral of more negativity cascading through my mind. A mental avalanche of sorts, gaining velocity and momentum as those unwanted thoughts crash down relentlessly through my head.

I’m no expert in physics, but I do understand the power of momentum. How life tends to create more of what you’re experiencing and expecting, even if you don’t want it.

I’ve gotten good at noticing where my emotional momentum is taking me. I can feel when I’m caught up in my own avalanche of negativity, anxiety, and doubt. Left unabated, the momentum of my thoughts intensifies. But noticing when I’m stuck in an avalanche is my first step of getting out of it.

Awareness is a super power. Knowing where I am allows me to create a plan to get me where I want to be. My thoughts will go where they will go, but I get to decide if a will allow them to keep me there. At times I need to give myself some time to process the negativity, anxiety, and doubt. Just give it a safe non-judgmental space to be seen and heard. To slow the momentum.

Then decide where I want to go from there.

We have the freedom to think what we want to think. We have the freedom to be empowered by our thoughts. We have the power to reframe any situation we find ourselves in.

We have the power to redirect our emotional momentum.

Just because I’m stuck doesn’t mean I have to stay stuck.

During an avalanche of negativity, anxiety, and doubt, we are the only one who can pull us to safety.

Photo by Nicolas Cool on Unsplash

Moving Beyond The Easy, The Convenient, And The Good Enough

I didn’t like the process, but I loved the results.

The prep for a routine medical procedure included the elimination of some of my favorite foods for a week ahead of my appointment. It wasn’t quite fasting, but it might as well have been given what was on the list of foods I could eat.

A week later, I was surprised to feel so much better.

Many of those favorite foods were nothing more than habitually consumed foods, favorites by default based upon the frequency of indulgence. Easy, convenient, and good enough, three attributes you’d never use to describe a healthy relationship.

With food or with people.

My mini cleanse was an opportunity to reset what I was consuming, a chance to take a break from and to re-evaluate what I was willing to put into my body. An opportunity to make decisions more intentionally aligned with the healthier vision I have for myself and less out of habit.

I’ve been cleansing other parts of my life as well. My energy. My tribe. What I am willing to tolerate. What I’m no longer willing to accept.

Stepping back we may find we’ve become consumers of a great deal of toxicity in the world we’ve built around us, a world built more out of habit and less out of intention. We can see where we’ve habitually chosen the easy, the convenient, and the good enough relationships, opportunities, and situations which have left us feeling sluggish and diminished, emotionally winded and lethargic.

Life has repeatedly shown me that in every moment we get to decide if we are willing to perpetuate what is or willing to forge a different, more authentic path forward. We can either feed the habits which leave us vibrationally hungry or cleanse ourselves of the toxins which poison the path on our way to becoming who it is we are willing to become.

The moment is awaiting your decision.

Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash

Finding Time For Nothing

I used to feel kind of guilty.

I mean, I’ve got a long list of things I am responsible for, obligations to keep, commitments to live up to. Yet, almost defiantly, I’d sneak off into a secret space and engage in one of my favorite non-activities.

Nothing.

Sometimes I just need nothing.

To do nothing.

To be nothing.

To feel nothing.

Even if for a few brief moments.

There’s a peace to be found in nothing, where I allow myself to be momentarily detached from my responsibilities, obligations, and commitments. It’s a space with no rules nor expectations. It’s a quiet, timeless space where I just breathe.

Most of my visits to nothing are often measure in seconds, seconds I intentionally create for myself when I know I need to pause and reset my emotional footing.

Nothing ever happens by itself. I need to find the time for it. I need to be aware of when I need a break and then willing to actually do so.

Even if it’s just for a few re-centering moments.

Self care comes in many forms.

Sometimes in the form of nothing.

Deciding To Smile Anyway

Though he’s never spoken a word to me, his presence is a source of daily inspiration.

He’s been sitting in my garden for a few years now. Indifferent to the rain, snow, heat, or the cold, he just sits there. Smiling and laughing, without a care in the world.

I guess it’s pretty easy to not have a care in the world when you’re six inches tall and made out of concrete. And that’s exactly what he is, my cracked yellow Buddha, a small piece of statuary I found on a dusty shelf at a local closeout store. Cracked, because he’s been exposed to years of wet winter weather. Yellow, because I painted him in a failed attempt to protect his porous surface from the wet winter weather.

There’s something wonderfully imperfect about a cracked, yellow Buddha. Maybe that’s what Continue reading “Deciding To Smile Anyway” →

If Water Was Time

As a kid, you never thought about how much water was in the glass. You just drank from it. Never worried if you spilled or wasted any of it. There was always more. The supply was abundant and seemingly infinite.

I’ve never been concerned whether my glass was half full or half empty. I just wanted to know how much was in the glass. If water was time, at my age I know most of the water in the glass of my life has already been consumed. And with that awareness, I’ve become much more intentional when taking sips of time from the glass of my life.

The circle has gotten smaller, the superficial has been discarded, the drama gets left behind, creating space for depth, substance, purpose, and expression.

I’ve become extremely protective of that space.

We really never know how much is left in the glass, do we?

I don’t intend on wasting a single drop.

Photo by Paul Lichtblau on Unsplash

Embracing The Darkness

It’s here and it doesn’t care if I don’t like it.

The end of Daylight Savings Time gives me one extra hour of light in exchange for a season of increased darkness. That’s not a deal I would have made, but that’s the deal we get here in the Northern Hemisphere each November.

The older I get the more I think I’m solar powered. Daylight is a fuel source, and for the next few months that source will be in shorter supply.

The world always gives us the choice to embrace or resist what we see in front of us. Resisting What Is inevitably proves to be futile, embracing What Is doesn’t mean you actually like it.

The darkness is here and I get to decide what I am willing to do with it.

Most of my significant growth has come when I’ve embraced the darkness, of accepting the unlikable situations I’ve found myself in. In that darkness I’ve learned how I respond to the darkness around me. Frustration, patience, resilience, trust, anger…a full buffet of possible emotional reactions as I process and deal with the things I really don’t want to deal with.

My reactions don’t change the reality. My reactions show me how I’m dealing with it.

I don’t purposefully seek out darkness. It does have a way of finding me, though. And when it does find me I know as a human there is no one perfect response.

But my best response starts with accepting What Is, embracing even the darkness, and allowing myself to move forward toward the light.

Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash

Making Space For The Noise

At times it sounds like a talk radio show. Hostile. Loud. Contentious. Not what you want to hear while quietly sitting still on your meditation bench.

Welcome to the thoughts in my head.

Years ago I was told that meditation was a peaceful process. Just sit, close my eyes, and the light of positivity and peace would embrace me. How disappointed was I when that never happened. The mind will speak when it wants to speak and sometimes it has a lot of unpleasant things to say, even if you’re on your meditation bench.

My job is to notice, not to judge or criticize what my thoughts may want to contribute.

My job is to make space for the Noise.

The Noise. In the form of thoughts of frustration, uncertainty, regret, and doubt, all aspects of life we tend to experience but would rather not hear about. Especially when we’re trying to calm the mind through meditation.

Maybe the Noise just wants to be heard?

The Buddhist nun Pema Chodron speaks of the mind being like a blue sky, equating thoughts as clouds passing though. The clouds can be puffy white or dark and stormy, but the clouds demonstrate their impermanence, simply passing through and fading away for us to notice as Continue reading “Making Space For The Noise” →

The People You Meet Along The Way

They’re waiting for you.

Whether the road is well worn or it’s the road less traveled you’ll find them. Your perpetuators and your enablers. If that road is the road of your personal growth and evolution, magnetically you will encounter those willing to support you through your process. And if that road is the road of your own inner destruction, the magnet will make sure your inner demons don’t destroy you alone.

My life has been one of many paths, some far more enjoyable than others. There have been mountains of growth and valleys of self-destruction. On those paths I’ve chosen – intentionally and unintentionally – I’d experience more of what I expected to experience, even if I may not have wanted to experience more of it at all.

People included.

Regardless of my intended or unintended destination, there have always been people willing to either keep me stuck or to lift me higher. Like some sort of tribal magnetism. When I’ve been ready to grow the growth tribe would be found. When I was tethered to a mindset of limitation and lack, there were plenty of like-minded individuals available to share my misery with.

Perpetuators and enablers.

I was recently sent an unattributed quote about the impact of the people we surround ourselves with and how that immediate circle will influence and shape who we will become. Paraphrasing, when you hang around with five intelligent people you will become the sixth. Hang around with Continue reading “The People You Meet Along The Way” →

A Faceful Of Wisdom

“We have a winner!”

Spending a few days in Maine we decided to include a stop at the 9th Annual Wild Blueberry Festival in Gray. And what’s a Wild Blueberry Festival without a blueberry pie eating contest.

In a scene reminiscent of a Hallmark movie I found myself in a small idyllic New England town standing at a table with nine others, hands behind our backs and blueberry pies inches from our faces awaiting the word to begin. When all was said and done, I turned my pie-stained face upwards to see the judge pointing at me declaring me the winner of the competition.

I won a blueberry pie eating contest. In Maine.

The grand prize included a four-pack of locally bottled blueberry soda and, more importantly, bragging rights.

As I wiped my face clean from the blueberries and crust embedded in my scruffy facial hair, I was asked if the pie actually tasted good.

I hadn’t really noticed.

Granted, the goal of a pie eating contest is to consume what’s in front of you faster than the others at the table. Devouring an 8 inch pie in 61 seconds didn’t leave room the evaluate the quality of the pie. It was all about speed.

On the hours-long drive home, still basking in the glory of my unexpected victory, I started thinking about speed. As in the pace of life. As in how much of life I may have missed being too Continue reading “A Faceful Of Wisdom” →

Peter Mis LivingHalfFull.com

Lessons From A Life Unfolding

Category: awareness