Last night my partner Jonathan and I had a very simple and powerful conversation. As we were preparing dinner he said, “I’m really struggling inside myself.”

“What’s going on?” I asked him.

“I’m experiencing a global feeling of resentment, and I don’t like it at all.”

“Can you change it? “ I asked him. “Can you actually choose the feelings that arise in you, moment to moment?”

“Well, I’m telling myself that I should be able to, that I should be able to choose something else right now, other than this resentment.”

“But is that true?” I asked him. “If you ask the part of you that really knows, can you actually exercise that kind of control over your experience?”

He paused for a moment and dropped inside himself. “No,” he said, “I can’t. The only thing I have control over is how I respond to what arises.”

“And what happens,” I asked him, “when you focus on not liking that feeling and wanting it to go away?”

“It gets worse.” he said, “It feels solid and compacted.”

“And for me, “ I said, “ in relation to difficult feelings, I often get caught in wanting to know why-why am I feeling like this, what is this really about? But as long as I am resisting what is, there is no insight, just suffering.  When I finally stop struggling, and open to whatever is here-then directly out of the experience itself, insights begin to flow.”

“Yes, “ he said, dropping his shoulders, and taking a deep breath, “that’s just how it is. When I decide that I can’t stand my present experience, I end up being resentful about being resentful!”

Even after all these years of listening, practicing and inquiring in this way, I am still amazed to see how the mind creates so many layers of suffering.  And how the suffering begins to dissolve as soon I am truly willing to just be open and present. Instead of running away, or judging, or fixing, or analyzing, I can allow myself to be with this feeling, this thought, this aversion, this belief, that feels so painful, so wrong, perhaps totally unacceptable. The radical simplicity of this presence is the root of all healing, awakening and transformation.  And everything in the stream of our human conditioning seems to be persuading us to be some other way.

I notice this when people ask me about my coaching, yoga, and group work. I speak about learning to be present, and they often give me a puzzled look as if to say, “Is that all? It can’t be that simple.” Or sometimes someone will say, “Okay, I’m present, now what?” But most of the time we aren’t really present. To be fully present is something quite ordinary and at the same time very profound. It’s as if all the scattered atoms in our being come into full alignment, and our whole field of consciousness starts to vibrate in harmony with something vast, universal, and radiant.

Of course there is work to be done, steps to be taken, evolution wanting to happen. When our actions flow from presence, they are full of creativity, love, freedom and courage. So presence is the foundation, the place we never need to leave, even when life makes enormous demands on us. This soft and fluid openness is so easy to deny, pass over, or fail to acknowledge, because we are focused on our problems, or our tomorrows, or any other agenda that seems more important than the spaciousness of who we really are.

We certainly hear a lot of talk in our world right now about living in the now. It’s a great thing to understand this principle with our minds. But it’s not enough. That understanding needs to become part of our whole emotional body, and then our physical body. Then it’s no longer something we need to remember, it’s something we are living and breathing.

How would it feel in your body right now, if your cells, if your muscles, if your bones could open to the light and simplicity of being? What story are you telling yourself about why you can’t let go into this openness now, just as you are?

with love
Shayla