MY STRUGGLES WITH BEING PRESENT
Years ago I read a book about being present and living in the Now. The book impacted me in a very powerful way. For 2 weeks I was more present and alive than I had ever been. My state of being had completely shifted. Then one day, I lost it and couldn’t figure out how to get it back. I re-read the book and other books and tried to get back there and I just couldn’t “find it”. The harder I tried to be present, the more it eluded me. I eventually realized that I was disconnected from the present moment because of numerous emotional blockages. I was angry about the past and resented people from the past and I was terrified of the future. What if something happened? What if I didn’t become successful enough? What if this relationship didn’t work out? What if I lost this job? What if my looks faded? And on and on. I later learned that fear of the future is always rooted in what happened in the past. I also learned that the anger and resentment about the past was really just covering up deeper current emotions such as pain and grief. So, I learned that if I wanted to be more present, I needed to start healing the things from my past that were causing me to exist everywhere but the present moment.
This is when I started unpacking my life so to speak. To be more present you have to process the emotions that are stuck in your system. You need to get them OUT. At the time I hadn’t yet developed the O.U.T Healing Process, so I went through a variety of things - Meditation and journaling techniques were helpful. Then things like Carl Jung’s shadow work. Then megadoses of mushrooms, then microdoses of mushrooms, then this retreat or that training program. Then this psychic or that energy worker, this shaman or that guru. I was in fact noticing changes in the way I felt and in my life but my state was still oscillating between extremes. One day I sat down in a corner of my room in a not good state and had two realizations. One, I was chasing something and I didn’t even know why? Two, I thought that there was something outside of me which was going to give it to me or do it for me. As I look back now, I guess I just wanted to feel happier and more confident and I thought something or someone would solve all my problems.
What changed on that day was that I realized what I needed wasn’t outside of me and that I was going to have to do the work. Sure, there would be healing influences in the form of people, books, remedies, etc, that helped me, but that “I” was responsible. In addition, I shifted my Why. It wasn’t about ME any more, really. I wanted to heal because the more I healed, the more those around me would be capable of healing and the more they were capable of healing the more those around them were capable of healing and so it goes that the world could then heal. Soon after this, I developed OUT and really started to get some stuck emotions OUT of my system. I started feeling more balance and ease in my life and more importantly, I developed the intuitive knowing that helps me know exactly what I need to achieve more balance in my life. Heck, Life isn’t always easy and I can get knocked out of balance, but I can usually get it back quite quickly.