The ever-present unease
Stress, busyness, tensions, conflicts, exhaustion, physical pain, emotional imbalance, outbursts of anger, panic, fears, addictions and unbalanced relationships: these are just a few symptoms from a wide range of life's challenges. You often try to escape the unease that is present in your life, whether as constant background noise or in acute form. Yet you notice that the unease, in whatever form it shows up, follows you like a shadow.
Your unease follows you like a shadow.
Strong emotions as a survival strategy
It isn't that you don't make an effort, but you may wonder whether your efforts are really effective. The factors mentioned above often go hand in hand with strong emotions. These emotions have a way of pulling you into your unconscious field and taking control of you. You identify with these emotions and you act them out in all sorts of different ways. You have then landed in an unconscious reaction pattern, a memory of an old survival strategy that takes you far away from your true self.
Trapped in your own life drama
You identify with your pain and with your life stories, which give you a sense of identity and justify why you are who you are. In your mind, your repeat button is switched on. Time and again you relive your adventures and the words that were spoken. The symptoms disguise themselves as an invitation to heal from your addiction to drama. Your dramas begin and end, with one hundred per cent certainty, in pain. There is an unconscious refusal to face your own pain and grow beyond it, because you are afraid that your own drama will come to an end. After all, who are you without pain? You have no idea yet.
You are afraid that your own drama will come to an end.
In the trap of time
Everyone does it. You are no exception. You too have fallen into the trap of time. You live from time consciousness and not from the NOW. It starts as soon as you get up. Your thoughts wander off to events and people from the distant or recent past, or leap ahead to a more ideal future that you picture for yourself. This train of thought is accompanied by strong emotions that manifest as physical discomfort. It is a compulsive process that you seem able to escape only with great difficulty. Of course, because you see nothing else around you. You live from memories (the past) and from imagined desires (the future). As a result, however, you miss the grand gala of the NOW. You are losing your precious time.
Don't miss the grand gala of the NOW.
The troops of resistance fall in line
As soon as you decide that you would like to change something in your life and take steps to feel better, your troops of resistance turn up. You feel resistance and judgements orchestrated by your reasoning mind. You are right, the other person is wrong. You are here, but you want to be there. You feel the stress rising. You come into conflict with yourself or with those around you. Your conflict is a clash between the demands and expectations that your mind imposes on you and what IS. This is a movement to avoid life. You are completely gone from the NOW.
Stress = You are here, but you want to be there.
The NOW rescues you from the bottomless pit of the past
Imagine an hourglass as a metaphor for the passing of time. The sand that ends up in the bottom half symbolises the time we have already spent. The sand that still has to fall through the narrow passage represents the future. You have no idea how many grains of sand you have left, how much time you have been granted. Yet you spend a lot of time diving into the bottomless pit of the past, which is not really a past at all, but a thread of memories of previous NOW moments. Because you are afraid that the past might repeat itself, you worry about the future, which does not exist either, but is a thread of longed-for NOW moments that are yet to come. As a result, you miss the narrow passage of the NOW. The only moment that counts. The only moment you need.
The NOW is the key to yourself
In the NOW, time consciousness is absent. Your problems, your worries and your painful suffering cannot possibly survive in the NOW. They disappear. You perceive without the lens of your mind. You awaken into life. When you are in the NOW, everything becomes clearer and more alive. You perceive that life literally flows through everything. You experience a deep love for all that life. An intense feeling of peace is the experience you radiate. You are present. You are at one with your being.
In the NOW, your pain disappears.
Listen to the vibrant silence between each breath.
It is so easy that we make it difficult. A few tips.
Being in the NOW is not really so difficult in itself, but by riding along with everything that distracts you from this precious moment, it can seem extremely hard. A few tips may help you:
- Learn to go within. Practise looking deep inside. What do you experience? What is happening within you? How do you deal with it? Observe yourself. Every day.
- Listen to your inner body during your everyday activities, not only during your meditations. Every day.
- Become aware of your body. What signals is it giving? What is it telling you? Do you experience yourself as present or absent? If it is the latter, adjust your course. Being present in your body gives you confidence. Every day.
- Do everything you do with your full conscious-BEING in the moment. Be there with your attention, your care and your love. Everything you touch takes on a deeper quality. Bring your attention to the action itself and let go of the expected result. Every day.
- Let the Light of your conscious-BEING shine on themes, situations and relationships you find difficult. What happens then? Every day.
- Practise inner acceptance of everything you have encountered in your life. You are not misreading this. Everything! Accept everything that is happening now. Everything. Don't get drawn into arguing, defending or reasoning. Accept. This is a powerful and liberating movement. Every day.
- Feel gratitude for life, for all your experiences and adventures, for who you are. Every day.
- Pay more attention to the silence than to the sounds. Let the sounds pass through you and experience the silence behind them. Make silence a priority. Listen to the vibrant silence between each breath. Every day.
- This one certainly cannot be left out, because it is the common thread running through this blog post. Avoid any worrying thoughts about the past or the future. Shift your focus if it happens anyway. Come back to the NOW, this narrow passage that leads you into an immense empty space. Every day.
One more fun one to finish
- Sit down calmly.
- Let your thoughts come in gently.
- At a certain moment, of your own choosing, ask yourself: ‘I wonder what my next thought will be.’
- You wait…
- What happens?
- If all goes well, you will be surprised.
The NOW is always there
Your presence in the NOW is THE key to freedom. A group of people who are present together in the NOW creates a powerful field of creative intelligence. Together you bring about a collective transformation. The NOW is always present. Enjoy it to the full.
Hilde Van Bulck
- Awareness Architect, Speaker, Author
- Systemic constellation facilitator and consultant
- Ambassador for Belgium and Director of the Scientific Department for Education and Constellations at Constellators International.
