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Tag: present moment
The Thanksgiving Gift
Live in the here and now. For in that space God lives, And life is real and flows as it is meant to do. No problems, no questions, no answers. Just life being a dancer Beautifully moving and interbeing. Creative and all-seeing, In-and-of-itself.
It was Saturday, November 28, 2020 and “another beautiful day in paradise,” as my wife and I often describe San Diego weather. Only a couple of days before, we had celebrated Thanksgiving Day, while still isolating because of the COVID-19 pandemic. I had cooked the usual brined turkey, and we had feasted on the leftovers for two days. Now I wanted to take a long walk to help me lose the pounds I had gained during the celebration. As I stepped out the door of our condo at 8 am, the icy wind hit me and I knew I needed a sweater. I drove the few miles to Torrey Pines beach to walk up the “mountain,” to the preserve trails, and there commune with nature.
Halfway up the hill to the top of the Torrey Pines preserve, the idea struck me that I could do a longer trek. UCSD, the university campus where I had worked for 28 years until my retirement in 2018, was a six-mile walk. As I crested the hill of the preserve, I felt I was up to the long walk. The air was crisp, but the walk had warmed my body and so I took the sweater off, knowing it would only get warmer. A bright sun illuminated the morning. Clear blue skies framed the Pacific Ocean to my right, shimmering a dark blue-green shade. I had anticipated that the noise of those walking the trail and of the cars off in the distance would fade as I reached the plateau of the preserve. I wanted to listen to the sound of silence. But it was not to be. Too many cars and a few more folks than I had expected were walking the trails this morning. Silence didn’t have a chance. The siren song of the university called me. I continued past the Torrey Pines Golf Course, Scripps Clinic, the Hilton hotel, and a variety of other places before reaching the campus.
I had not visited the university in over a year. From the road, I had seen new structures slowly but inexorably grow in the space that had been a parking lot during my time there. A group of new buildings now overlooked the familiar grounds. As I approached the campus, my body signaled it needed a brief rest. I found a bench on Torrey Pines Road that served as a bus stop and collapsed into the hard metal seat. The walk had been refreshing as the light and translucent leaves and grass along the way called my attention to the beauty of nature. I felt tired but grateful and enjoying the moment.
As I looked down from the bench, I spied two pennies on the ground. I picked them up and felt there had to be one additional penny somewhere to complete the trilogy. I scanned the ground but could not see any, so after a period of rest, I continued my walk into campus. On my return, 15 minutes later, I stopped by the same bench and the same strong feeling of a third penny flooded my brain. This time I looked down and saw it, near where I had found the other two. Strange, I thought, that I hadn’t seen it previously. I have come across money before on the street, from coins to dollar bills, and don’t remember ever being concerned about the year it was made. This time, the thought occurred naturally, spontaneously, and insistently. I looked and noticed the years: 1995, 2009, and 2012. The dates vaguely reminded me of something.
As I continued my return home, it surprised me to realize that in 1995 I had received tenure from the university; In 2009, I had edited my first and only academic book on Mirror Neurons; and in 2012, I received promotion to Full Professor. If anyone had asked me what the three most significant experiences in my career at UCSD were, I would have said it was those three things. The more I considered it, I realized that other events, such as publication of one of my most widely read papers in 2005, would only be fourth on the list. How intriguing, I thought? Am I creating a story around these dates or is there a deeper significance in my finding these coins with these specific dates?
I have a creative mind and may have “conjured” significant events for whatever years might have appeared. Yet, the moment felt special. The feeling was that in some unexpected and special way, I was communing with something greater than myself. The message these three pennies seemed to be delivering was, “I know you well.” A wave of gratefulness overwhelmed and pervaded my senses. The walk home was quiet and humbling the more I contemplated what had transpired.
The Deafening Silence
In this moment of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have, for the most part, voluntarily detached from the sources of our connection to life. These relationships provide the glue that makes us social beings and involve family, friends, and those in the larger community. Circumstances have mandated social isolation for a few weeks. But if such a period is prolonged, the downsides begin to appear. Three months into the pandemic, the deafening silence of social isolation is creating a rising tide of loneliness. Like a slow-motion wave, it is gaining speed and momentum.
Loneliness, according to many psychologists, is not necessarily about being alone. Rather, it is about feeling alone and isolated. Because loneliness is a state of mind, it has straightforward solutions. The question is when and where to apply them. The easiest way to decrease and even end loneliness is to focus on activities that distract. They distract us from the missing social bonds that we ache to experience. Such distractions are effective temporary measures. Inevitably, their therapeutic effect wears off and the loneliness returns. But this gives a glimpse into what can be a more permanent solution. That is, loneliness depends on memories to feed the feeling. We recall the friends and family we miss, the conversations we had that are now nonexistent. And we pine for what those memories conjure up.
The more enduring solution, therefore, is similar to the temporary one but involves returning to a more permanent state of mind. A state where memories are no longer the salient thing. This argument does not suggest eliminating memories; It suggests eliminating their saliency and importance. Notice too that the implication is that this is a more natural state of being. How is this possible? The best way is to make focusing on the present moment a way of life. Practicing this leads to making current experiences more salient compared to past events.
I know this because this practice has an extensive history in the psychological and metaphysical literatures. And we can gauge the practice’s efficacy and effectiveness by studying such literature. For me, the experience is also personal. Reducing the saliency of memories, reduces the loneliness created by longing for the past. To make this a reality, we must persist in the practice. Like other changes in behavior, we need to train the mind until it becomes an automatic response.
What happens when the practice is successful? Most of the time, dwelling on the present means a rising curiosity regarding the world, nature, our bodies. It further means a lessening interest in our inner and deprecating self-talk. This outward curiosity of a child recalls a more natural state that we once experienced. It is a state of mind that wants to know the ‘why’- ness of things. We become absorbed and interested in the smallest and most irrelevant of things. It produces a rise in creative thinking for we recognize that nothing is irrelevant; Everything seems fitting and beautiful. The deafening silence of loneliness becomes the resonant joy of life. It does not mean that loneliness won’t occur and take you by surprise. Instead of dwelling on it, however, the curious, present-focused mind knows what to do and can nip the rising feeling in the bud.
Image by soumen82hazra from Pixabay
I Am Here
“I don’t know” is a phrase that has become more and more common and relevant as I try to burrow down into the nature of my psyche, trying to plumb the depths of my being. Like most individuals, I questioned my identity during my early development: Who am I, if not my opinions? Where did this existence, which appears more substantial, come from? What is the authentic me? I don’t understand why such questioning became so important to me. But my natural predisposition to know led me to a career in science. Specifically, to the study of the brain and mind, which augmented the questions I had. For the last twenty years it has been my continuing effort to understand who I am, really.
Following retirement 18 months ago from an academic position, I wanted to test the notion that my life could be turned over to that greater presence I felt all around. What that meant for me was reducing conceptual thinking, the intellectual millstone of an academic. It meant relaxing into my physical being, as opposed to living in my head. It meant, most of all, letting go of the small and large expectations of what life ought to be. It meant trusting and accepting that my life was less under my control than I realized.
I imagined a process of letting go of my expectations, my wants and ego-based thoughts. And a type of merging with a greater unity-to the point of losing the sense of me. Unfortunately, letting go has been difficult and incomplete. My mind, either unwilling or unable to, creates and recreates me, as if it cannot do otherwise. The thought-generator aspect of my mind can only be still and absolutely quiet for but a few seconds at a time. Nonetheless, it is that stillness experience that keeps me going. For in those moments, I sense something, a presence, a different life, an intelligence. It’s a presence that neither beckons nor rejects. It simply says, “I am here.” But to make the jump into that unknown seems to require letting go of the life I have known. It’s a challenging thing to do.
I have made strides in that direction. But everywhere I look for answers to this more real nature, whether it is the sycamore tree outside the living room window in its fullness of spring, the myriad objects in the condo that I share with my wife, or the feelings that bubble up on the meaning of my life, I am confronted by the one response. “I don’t know”. It is a wall of silence and darkness that seems impenetrable. Despite the persistence of this darkness, I have become more and more comfortable with this not-knowingness. There has been a settling of my anticipation, eagerness, future-oriented desires. I feel a different calmness.
While this has been happening, I have noticed a reduction in the distance between the sensorial phenomena reaching my brain and who I feel I am. Whereas sensory experience was distinct, separate, and somewhat superficial before, it has gained a sense of solidity, of closeness, of vibrancy, of relevancy that it did not have before. The imaginary presence I spoke about earlier is steadily transforming into the sensory experience of this moment. This experience is what now whispers, “I am here.”