A YOGI CHA BLOG

WANTING THIS MOMENT TO BE SOMETHING ELSE

I was sitting watching people walking by at the airport. 8 hours of layover. That is long. I felt uninspired and tired. I felt lonely. I felt out of control because my situation wasn’t really what I wanted it to be. So instead of focusing like I usually do at an airport, on the adventure, the endless possibilities just around the corner, I was feeling isolated.

I got that feeling that I had long time ago: where I wish I was someone else (feeling as if just being me wasn’t enough).

As if, someone else in my situation would be more… fun? Interesting?

Or something like that. I would feel that way long time ago when I really was living a life where I constantly wanted to live someone else’s.  My phone in the hand, like some kind of lab rat pushing the trigger button for the dopamine kick and since there was not that much more happening every 90 seconds, it didn’t do the trick. On the contrary, it made me realise even more how worthless I made my present moment.

One thing happened here. I got a message from a friend that I was not expecting and it changed my focus. Wow, someone is thinking of me! Maybe I can be fun?

She sent me a podcast that I then sat down to listen to and all of a sudden my situation was completely different. I started writing. I got inspired and enjoyed myself again. What had happened?

I was all of a sudden, just there. In that moment. By being mindful, presence is teaching you to come back to who you already are. All of a sudden, life becomes your meditation teacher.

When we feel as if the situation isn’t what we want it to be, we feel out of control. It makes us uncomfortable because we cannot know what will happen and most of all, it feels as if we cannot do anything about it. It is out of our control and it makes us vulnerable. Since most of our lives, being vulnerable is unsafe and attacks our being. If we dig a little deeper, we can maybe even see how this is rooted in the feeling of shame. Shame is the deepest feeling of unworthiness, of not being enough, because shame attacks our being. Guilt is easier to deal with because it is focused on our action but shame tells us that we are bad.

What can we do in those moments? We need to understand what makes us feel out of control. It’s the fact that we are focusing on something that is confirming this belief. So if we can turn our focus towards what we actually can control, we change our perspective. We change our vibration, we come back to the present moment.

I was lucky enough to be helped here. In my moment of feeling stranded with nowhere to go and no one being concerned of my wellbeing (yes, we can get pretty dramatic and self absorbed in those moments. Denying it will not make it go away, accepting it will more do the trick. When we accept we can process, we can let go. Letting go implies letting be what is right here.) I received the perfect message. It was an acknowledgement of my existence and even more so, a change of focus for my attention since she sent me something to listen to. Maybe we were on the same frequency and the right thing was done at the right time?

My perspective changed and the filters through which I was experiencing the world in that moment changed as well.

We can only experience the thoughts that are aligned with our emotional state. This means that depending on how we feel, we will think a certain way. This seems probably quite natural to anyone reading this. But do you understand what it means? It means that you label your experience, what you perceive, according to how you are feeling. If you are feeling out of control, bored, unworthy, … you will see the world through these lenses. Far too often, we are not capable of understanding this, especially when we need it the most. When we are in the situation of negative perception. In order to not identify with the thoughts (hint: its the thoughts in your head that create your perception, based on what emotional state you are in), we need to have the sobriety to observe them, to create a distance between them and who we are. That can only be done in radical presence. As long as we allow ourselves to be distracted (looking at the phone every 90 seconds or ordering the 4th coffee as just two examples), we are not present. However, by creating a feeling of presence that we can trigger whenever this happens, we can bring ourselves back here and now. It’s conditioning our mind to the present.

Allow yourself to be home where ever you are. As long as you are breathing there is more right with you then wrong with you, no matter what is wrong.