When you're stuck in a moment you can't get out of

So much of the talk about living in the present or making every moment a meditation can sound pretty glib to those whose present moment feels something like the U2 song, "Stuck In a Moment You Can't Get Out Of." What if the present moment is not a very nice place to be?  What if you don't want to be here, now?  What if you feel downright stuck and wish you could be anywhere but here?

In response to a recent post on this site, Linda asks, "Do you have advice on how to experience the gift of the moment when you really prefer not to be in it at all?"

For people who feel stuck in such a moment, I'm pretty guarded about giving advice.  Companionship, empathy . . . yes.  But advice will probably ring hollow to those whose present moment may be full of physical or emotional pain, despair, loss, fear, or debilitating mental distress.

I can say this much.  I've known my share of moments I'd prefer not to have lived through.  I'd have given just about anything to be anywhere but stuck in a moment I couldn't get out of.  I also know that there was no getting through those moments in any other way than living through them.  Wishing I could be anywhere else was natural, even understandable, but not very helpful. By wanting to be somewhere else I evacuated myself from the only place I could really be.

The only way through such moments is through them . . . as frightening as that may be.

Here are three practices I've learned from my own painful dwelling in such moments--ABCs for living in a moment you can't get out of:

1. Awareness.  Take stock of yourself.  Check in with your body, your blood pressure, signs of anxiety.  Awareness is the gift of freedom from being hooked by a past you cannot fix and a future you cannot control.  What you have is this moment.  Like it or not, it's the only moment you've got.

2. Breathe. When we want to be elsewhere, your breath becomes shallow.  Conscious breathing is the best way for you to move into awareness.  Breathe.  In and out.  It's is a spiritual and bodily practice that can't help but pulls you back into this moment.

3. Compassion. Reach out to yourself as if you are a friend in need.  You're apt to show others more compassion than you do yourself.  Compassion requires awareness of your real situation and whispers to of grace, saying, "All shall be well."

For a helpful article by neurologist, Dr. Robert Scaer on trauma, see The Precarious Present: Why is it so hard to stay in the present? Especially the final section and it's practical suggestions.

Can I experience more than fleeting moments?

About my last post, Struggling to live in the present, Joe and Linda ask good questions about experiences common to so many of us.  I'll address Joe's today, and Linda's later. He asks: Is it possible to have more that a brief moment during the day to enjoy being in the presence of our creator?

The experience Joe asks about is common to nearly all of us. We may have brief glimpses of real beauty and wonder, then live oblivious to it all in the push and pull of daily life until we collapse at day's end--too numb to seek God at all. We're not cloistered monks. We live beyond the sacred wall, amid the hustle and bustle of urban life. Few of us can change that, and there's no reason we should. But we can change is how we experience the busyness.

Is busyness an obstacle to enjoying the presence of our creator, or is our active life an opportunity to open more fully to the Presence Who is always present?

A true Christian spirituality (as with Buddhism, Sufism, and other spiritual traditions) affirms the latter.  The former view will leave us frustrated, but the latter awakens us to the presence of God who is always right here, right now.  The present is, frankly, all we have.  And the presence is where we encounter God.  But we're often so fixated on the past, or anxious about the future that we're anywhere but the place (the only place!) we can meet God.

I'm in favor of periods of stillness and silence and solitude. Gobs of it. But I'm not in favor of using stillness as an escape. Moments of ecstasy in stillness or rapture before a sunset merely makes it possible for us to live with more attentiveness to the Presence in times chaos and fear and noise.

So . . .

• Take care not to experiencing the presence of God as an either/or thing.
• Awaken now.
• If you're harassed and harried right now, if this moment is an ugly one and you don't want to be here now, acknowledge it; wake up to that truth.
• Awareness of my experience of the present is the key to living in the present.

Struggling to live in the present?

There's plenty that can keep us locked in the past or fixated on the future, anywhere but the present.

Some of you are asking (especially on Facebook) if it's really possible to live intentionally, here and now in the midst our busy lives--in a traffic jam, working in a chaotic office, tending a pair of screaming infants, arguing a case in a crowded courtroom.  Can we do it late in life when our minds feel a bit more like sieves, and our old habits seem hard to break?

Yes, we can.  In any place and at any age we can wake up to the gift of each moment.

That said, there are forces at work in us that keep us everywhere but the present.  And we must be honest about them.

We try to sit still.  We seek God in wordless prayer.  We try to focus on one task as we sit at our computers.  We try to be present before the one we love but our brains think they're a Twitter account with 10,000 friends--a new tweet arrives with each new moment and we can't seem to resist a quick glance.

If you can't stay in the present, congratulations, you're part of the human race.

• You're not weak.
• You're not spiritually inferior.
• And you don't lack that prayer-gene that your friend seemed get in spades.

Welcome to the journey.  Learning to live in the present is gonna take some work.

"Give me an example of focused intention"

Intention. Awakening our spiritual attention. A few of you have asked questions on this site or on Facebook about Monday's post.  Trish writes: "Ok, please give me an example of focused intention. I'm trying to follow you." In my blog post, Jim Brannan, a pilot (who thankfully knows what it means to stay focused on the task of flying an aircraft rather than letting his mind drift to a zillion other things) says intention is a matter of "focusing our attention, sustaining our awareness, checking in with God when our blood pressure goes up, or our anxiety increases. It means being aware of our inner lives in the midst of distraction."

To do this, here is what I'm doing right now...

1. I'm writing to you.
2. I am no where else but here.
3. I keep focusing on these words I'm putting on the page.
4. I keep myself thinking about you and the desire you have to live intentionally.
5. As thoughts come (as they inevitably do) about the emails that beg for my attention, or the meeting later today that will require some energy, or the painful experience that for one reason or another I still cling to, I keep returning with each distraction to this moment, and to the task right before me.

No matter what you do, this the key work you have to do. And it can revolutionize whatever you do: talking with a friend, balancing the checkbook, driving your car.

But intention does not mean perfection. It means that when my dog barks as he did just now wanting to go out, my attention shifts. I'm drawn away from the task. I get up, and open the door, and as I walk, my mind flits to a dozen other things. I recognize them, and invite myself back from the need to follow them. I sit back down and finish this little note.

I could do all this unintentionally, or I can focus my attention, direct my mind, concentrate my thoughts into the heart. Breathe. I can live with awareness and intention. And I'll be a lot happier.

The Simple Prayer of the Most Important People

The most important people today are probably not those we think of first. Kallistos Ware tells of St. Barsansuphios of Gaza (sixth century) who says that in his time there were three persons whose prayers likely held everything together. Because of their spiritual intention, the sun rises each day, evil is held in check, and life goes on. He even mentions their names. John, he says, is one of them. And Elias too. The third, he says, lives in the province of Jerusalem. It could be anyone—a priest, a farmer in the fields, a mother tending her hearth and her children. But it may well be Barsansuphios himself, who was trying to keep himself clear about his spiritual vocation, but humility kept him from saying so.

For those with eyes to see and ears to hear, Ware says, “the world is upheld by the prayer of hidden saints—Christian and, I believe, also non-Christian.”

Awakening to the spiritual life and the vocation of prayer in the midst of daily life is not, as I’ve said before, a cul de sac or private party. Just as a butterfly fanning its wings in Tokyo affects weather patterns in New York, our spiritual intention, our life of prayer, has enormous social and political consequences no matter how hidden our life may be.

Thomas Merton once said:

“I wonder if there are twenty people alive in the world now who see things as they really are. That would mean that there were twenty people who were free, who were not dominated or even influenced by any attachment to any created thing or to their own selves or to any gift of God, even to the highest, the most supernaturally pure of His graces. I don’t believe that there are twenty such people alive in the world. But there must be one or two. They are the ones who are holding everything together and keeping the universe from falling apart.” (New Seeds of Contemplation, page 203)

Who can say what good is happening in this world because of your hidden life of simple, and sometimes bumbling, prayer?