The poet wrote: Nowhere not, Lost when sought: This Moment.
The present moment…what a gift!
Of course, some would argue that the present moment is all any of us ever experience-it is, after all, “nowhere not”. But what about “lost when sought”-the seeking part. Could it be that we seek ourselves right out of the here and now experience? Maybe.
Sometimes we reject the present. Consider that gnawing feeling that whatever this moment holds is just not quite good enough; or the fear of missing out on other moments; or for many, the nearly constant seek-scrolling through social media.
And seeking is just one way the mind could rob us of this gift. We appreciate that there is the necessity of planning for the future and reflecting upon the past. But these worthwhile pursuits too often become future fretting and rumination over real or imagined past experiences. The present is lost.
One way to understand our dilemma is to remember why so many love trips and traveling. Most of us have experienced the satisfaction, the joy of a trip to a new place. It is educational we think to ourselves; it is cultural or historical or a window into others and their lives. All true.
But maybe there is another point. When we are in unfamiliar surroundings, something happens inside of us all. Senses are heightened. Habits of mind and body disappear to accommodate the excitement and freshness of our journey.
Simply put we are present. Sure there are moments when we become lost in thinking about schedules and tickets, but the novelty of travel alerts us again and again. We are freed from the tyranny of habitual perceptions and thoughts. We are fully, here and now…in whatever new environment we have entered. Besides the joys of new places and people, it is this experience of the present moment that delights us as we travel. So much so that some become quite obsessed with traveling and depressed at the thought of being at home.
These observations might present a slightly different way of looking at our travels and our time at home. Let us make the familiar unfamiliar again! Drop the habitual perceptions of home and see it anew. Acknowledge with gratitude that in an ever-changing universe, our home, backyard and neighbors are a little different every day.
The present, nowhere not…even from the front porch on Thanksgiving.
Open them, shut them, open them shut them, Give them a great big clap. Open them, shut them, open them, shut them, put them in your lap.
The classroom called special education holds labors and wonders and chants including this one with a hands-in-your-lap finale. This position can be a remarkable point of pause in the hands-busy lives of those students… and the rest of us.
You see, students in class learn life skills that most of the rest of us take for granted, as they pour a cup of juice or tie shoelaces. Hands dedicated to careful and slow pouring or tying is a thing of beauty to watch. To succeed, students like Dolores and Charlie and all of their peers paid rapt attention! And after awhile some teachers began to wonder: who is teaching whom?
What if we all sat still for a moment with our hands in the “pupil mudra”, simply in the lap? Or we could experiment with the symbolic hand gestures associated with various religious traditions like the meditative dhyana mudra: palm up right hand atop palm up left hand, thumbs touching. One could sneak the right hand from the lap to touch the ground even as the left hand remains in the lap. That’s the “earth witness mudra”–see the grand legend for that background story!
Pausing with hands in our lap invites a contemplative state. It sets the stage for the movements that follow. In fact, an interesting mindfulness practice is to simply watch our hands. After all, so many of our daily activities involve mindless hand-based movements, as we day-dream our way through pouring or tying or typing a sentence. We call it “muscle memory”, a kind of motor memory that joins the motor cortex with a part of the brain responsible for behaviors of habit. This efficiency, while essential, can lead to a lost-in-thought lifestyle.
Watching hands deliver these automatic actions now and then is to notice the miracle that we are. Next we could observe the thousands of similar automatic movements dedicated to eating a meal or driving a car or scrolling on a phone. Extraordinary!
No wonder that, in the classroom called special education, Dolores would exclaim in utter joy, “lets talk about hands!”
Much has been written on judgment in contrast with discernment and this short essay may add little to that literature. But here goes:
We notice stuff. Our senses are constantly filled with input from the physical world around us and within us. So much so that we automatically select certain inputs, and habituate to the rest, all to minimize the overwhelm from our dynamic surroundings.
Sensory input becomes perception as we organize and interpret these data. One aspect of that process might be called discernment and one expression of discernment could be called judgment. Discernment is a function of mindfulness. It is fluid noticing from moment to moment. Judgment notes and solidifies; it takes a stand. Each has a place.
Judgment has numerous contexts and meanings from religion to law to medicine to the childhood admonition to “show good judgment”. Many of us failed that one!
Some religions have a final or last judgment as well as cautions about judging others; to stand in judgment. Clinical judgment relates to professionals in medicine, nursing and psychology, and a call for rational evaluation and healing. Law presents the archetypal deliverer of judgment, a judge. At best justice emerges from the rigor of good and fair judgments, and at worst, injustice ruins lives by fine or incarceration with financial and reputational harms done. Lastly there are the everyday, ubiquitous judgments of daily decisions to cross the street against a red light or wait for the green; to take an umbrella when storm clouds appear…or not.
Now consider the judgment of others. All around us we notice similarities and differences in appearance, opinion and behavior. And sometimes extreme and harmful behavior requires strong judgment and a hard NO. But in a world fueled by social media, cancel culture and our imperfect perceptions, too many judgments promote misunderstanding, a lot of ill-will and a big mess.
What if we paused instead and looked carefully, with discernment. It does not disappear the mess but invites us to engage and take a deep look. That judgment off-ramp is at hand, but we could hold off for a moment. It can be uncomfortable as we discern similarities and especially differences between people, places, things and situations. Resisting snap judgments allows us to fully engage with that experience.
The steadfast observer might persevere. Discernment after all is about noticing differences, suspending judgment and experiencing. It brings our wisdom and compassion to the forefront and gives a chance for our irrationalities and ill-will to recede.
We could wake up to our capacity to discern the world clearly and take a stand now and then. With practice, judging takes its proper place in moment-to-moment discernment.
It’s a child’s plea whispered or even demanded (so often at the twilight of bedtime). These stories might be ancient or hot off the presses or made up by parents on the spot. But it is undeniable that kids need to hear those tales, featuring the irresistible protagonist who is none other than themselves.
And the tale so often invokes an antagonist and antagonisms aplenty. There are conflicts conquered, with lessons and morals and life instructions toward “living happily ever after”. Now that’s a good story!
With children, we do not need to explain how the mechanism of storytelling puts them at the center of every plot. They just know! Perhaps that is because our brains are story-attracted brains from the start. Stories promote life lessons, socialization and the assimilation of values. Such a brain has evolutionary advantages for groups, individuals and their progeny.
Story-attracted brains actually think in stories; we become the story. From early on we think in narratives that consist of thoughts and images often propelled by emotion. We remember in stories and we plan in them too. These capacities are an advantage to survival, and maybe sometimes, our happiness.
The story-oriented mind can bring people together with common cause narrations and shared advantage for all. Good stories. Of course, some stories pull groups apart. And competing narratives can and do pit tribes against one another with spats and rumbles and wars. Within individuals, negative thoughts can unleash stories of war upon the self. These can degrade to self-contempt and self-destruction. Lesser outcomes might include a bad day, un-satisfactoriness and deflation. Those are the bad stories.
Perhaps one of the most insidious, if not altogether bad, functions of stories is to inflate a compensatory, false self: “me, Me, ME”. Sometimes called our “storyline”, these ubiquitous narratives address deflation with an armor of conceit or worse: an over zealous selfishness and sense of entitlement.
Such a problem has led some to consider the alternative of inner quiet and no story at all. We could drop our self-serving storylines and engage fully with life on life’s terms. No agenda. No scheming. The trouble is most find it hard if not impossible to go from bad stories to no story at all. Those bad stories seem to grip us…and if we are honest, many of us hold on tightly to them too.
How might we proceed?
While difficult at first, we could start attending to good stories that reduce narratives imbued with automatic negative thoughts, and rest in our blessings. We nudge forward stories that promote themes of loving kindness, compassion, generosity and serenity. With imperfect but consistent effort those personal narratives slowly change.
What else? We could unplug from compulsions with social media and be inspired by the myths, parables, koans and chronicles that highlight our basic goodness and wisdom. These perennial philosophies abound across time and space, so we should pause and listen.
While bad stories anchor us to egotisms within and between human beings, good stories seem to calm us, even liberate us. We could be delivered, moments at a time into the serenity of no story at all:
that wonderful pause and silence at the end of every outbreath.
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