Be Still and Pay Attention

Friends - it is my joy to gather with you tonight at All Souls to practice one of the most helpful techniques that I've been playing with: stillness and present moment awareness as the highest form of worship.

Personally, my life has been in major flux - lots of change and possibilities presenting themselves about where my life is going and how it will unfold.  And boy-oh-boy, my mind is having a FIEEEEELD day jumping around like a wild monkey, thinking about all the things that could be, that would be, that should be, that might be.  To be completely honest, it's kind of fun to let her go wild and fantasize her little monkey heart out in the beginning, but after awhile, that fun bouncy little thing turns into a monkey on crack -- thinking through all of the things that can go wrong - terribly, awfully wrong.  Cracked out, bug-eyed, hyperventilating monkey usually ends with the conclusion that the world will end and I will be forgotten: left for dead, cold, alone and in misery.  

Okayyyyyyy, maybe not that extreme, but usually, her story ends up being something similar to the apocalypse of my creation.

We live in a society that worships the head monkey, believing that thinking itself is the way out of any difficult situation or problem; however, my meditation and yoga practice have taught me the exact opposite -- that it's in the un-thinking place that the answers and guidance are revealed, one moment, one breath at a time.

If God is a living, breathing, moving organism of which I am a part, Her presence is right here, in this moment, Her guidance coming to me now and now and now, Her gentle movement like the flow of a stream that I can participate in or resist.  

And while sometimes the 72 new books on spirituality I just bought from Amazon are helpful, most times they just get in the way of the perpetual and perfect the guidance of This Holy Moment.

This is why a contemplative practice of mindfulness that consistently grounds me into "what's true now" has been the highest form of worship lately.  Because in it, I can feel that the living, breathing God within and around me is always directing me into perpetual resurrection one moment, one sensation, one breath at a time.

But if my body-mind-spirit instrument is bouncing around on-line shopping and Facebook browsing and email checking, playing with a huge list of what has been and what could be, I completely miss the guidance that's being offered to me in the Now.

This is one of the many reasons that we practice yoga: to tune into the present-moment-God-mind over and over again (which literally changes the functioning of the brain), so that when we enter that pivotal and intense moment where we used to clock out and let fear take over, the day will come when we choose to clock in -- to be with challenge and to face it head on do that really scary thing that we're called to do because we know we're guided to do it.  Something bigger speaks through us, moves through us, lives through us, if only we can get still enough to let it.
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Join me on the mat tonight to clear the mind and to ground into the Present Moment Reality which is holy, wise and unbelievable intelligent.