Archive for June 23rd, 2012
On Being Present – Just Being Present
It is what it is
I have been struggling lately with energy and as a result have found myself doing very little productive; if anything, I have been wasting my time. Take today as an example. I slept in long past my usual 6:00 AM wake-up. During the night I did have dreams and woke for a moment but refused to record the dream, being obstinate. Yes, I can be a very stubborn person. Once up, I went through some of my usual routine including taking time for meditation. But it didn’t take long for the resistances to be rekindled and I skipped making my morning coffee and checking my e-mail. I did finally, at 11:00 AM decide to eat a bowl of cereal with fruit for breakfast followed by a short chat with my son using GoogleTalk. Then, I slipped back into doing nothing again.
It took until almost 1:30 PM before I got my butt in gear and decided to go out of the suite and engage with the world, a world that is coated with gray skies that leaked without much enthusiasm of their own. I had a chore to take care of and a small desire to check out some books at a Chapters store in a shopping mall. While in the store I found a few books I had been in search of and took them to the Starbucks coffeehouse that is found in most Chapters stores. I bought a plain coffee and a scone and settled in to check out the handful of books so as to decide which ones to buy and which ones to keep. And somewhere along the way, I woke up.
It was a neat thing, to wake up sitting in a coffeehouse while in front of a cup of coffee and a handful of books with my laptop opened. What surprised me is my response to this event of waking up. I somehow avoided getting angry with myself for wasting time. I realised that I was just being and that I am now just being. No one moment of being is better than a different moment of being. This is what it means to me to accept the shadow as much as the light. When I get angry with myself, I am berating myself for being myself, thinking that I should be better: more fit, more alive, more productive, more super human, more spiritual. But the truth is, I simply need to be.
