Wanting things to be different

After a beautiful summer, much too short, the weather did a left turn this week. Saturday was 99 degrees, Monday was lightning, thunder, hail, rain, and cold, cold, cold. We turned the heat on--September 1st. I'm just not ready to let go of summer yet. In fact, that got me thinking of all of the things in life with which we just struggle. Letting go is one of the tough life lessons, and one of the things that create suffering, according to ancient wisdom traditions. We suffer because we want things to be different than they are. We struggle to hold on, we resist the changes which inevitably come. We want more, different, better. We'd rather have the past because we've been there and survived, or, we'd rather have the future, because anything is better than the present. Or......you can make up your own statements to put in the blank. Sometimes this resistance takes the form of waiting....waiting until the kids are in school, or older, until there's more money, until things settle down, until ....(fill in the blank). One of the great teachings of yoga, or buddhism, or taoism, or hinduism, or any of the Perennial Philosophies of the world, is the importance of living in present time, in the moment, in reality, to show up in the present moment, where our body, breath, mind, thoughts, spirit, soul are all in one place together. It's called integrity, or wholeness, or even unity. And even though it sounds simple and logical, it is one of the most difficult things for a human being to master. It is also one of the key points to de-stressing. We stop the mind from yanking us around, feel our feet on the ground, feel breath moving in and out of our nostrils and lungs, check in with our feelings, notice that we are not being chased by lions and tigers and bears, oh my! We are integrated, we are capable, we are present, and in this moment of presence, even Presence, there is the chance to choose. Freedom to choose only exists in the present moment. Freedom to choose includes how to respond, how to act instead of react, what would we rather be thinking or feeling, what we could choose to think instead of what the automatic mind-feed is. Remember that the mind , attached to ego, likes to think it's in charge. It feeds us any number of random thoughts any time it wants. The trick to maneuvering around the "mind-field" is to determine which thoughts are trying to get through to us to help us, and which thoughts are being randomly generated to drag us down, to explode in our faces, so to speak. I think that is the journey of consciousness....to notice and to choose, to recognize in each moment that we have a choice, the greatest of all gifts from God---the ultimate Free Will, to choose our response in each present moment. That is the Precious Present.