Being Present

Just over a year ago, I experienced an affliction of the most babbling mind on earth - a mind possessed by all things outside me. And though I knew how to meditate, had practiced yoga for many years, drenched myself in Buddhist readings, believed with the strongest conviction that I should "Be Here Now"...I couldn't. I couldn't be present. I didn't even know what it was.

I went for long bike rides. There were many days of long bike rides on the Delaware Canal path and all over the beautiful countryside of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Bike rides do seem to have a way of clearing the cob webs of the mind, and I would experience an ease, a loosening....but not presence.

In fact, I can remember trying so earnestly to be present that I'd be talking to myself - "I am seeing the canal, I am seeing this meadow, I am feeling the rumble of the earth beneath my wheels, I am sweating". A narration of observations. Such an enormous effort! Kind of like contracting a muscle as tight as you can, so you know you have that muscle. You actually feel less when you're all locked up. All the subtlety is gone.

To be alive so long and to not truly be able to experience presence seems a very peculiar thing. How can it be such a difficult skill and not just a natural tendency? I am alive. I should know how to feel fully alive. How can I not know how to be present?

What IS presence?

Before I began writing this blog, I googled the topic. I found nothing I believed. It's weird that so many of us agree we need to be present, but seem to have little idea what that really means. Presence seems so illusive. Subjective. We're all making up our own definitions. Hallmark writes cards about it.

I think that it's probably not subjective at all. It's universal. It's the same for all of us. And it either takes tons and tons of practice to achieve or it arrives in an instant - unannounced - like in the face of a beautiful sunset or in the pain of a broken heart. Life has its ways of waking us up, and all of a sudden, we're Here - Now. Then the sunset is over, or the broken hearted brain moves into action, and we're...There - Then. Lol - someone should write that book - "Be There Then".

Well, I can happily happily report that I am now a great dabbler in the present moment. And so I think I may have discovered why being present is such a hard thing to write about, and why googling it turned out to be so dissatisfying.

I can't describe it.

Yet, I'd say, being present is not much of anything. It's just being in my body. Being really in my body. And to elaborate would probably bring me further away from what I mean. BUT I will say that it has been my meditation practice - my meditation and my yoga - that has helped me immensely to know the home that is me. To feel whole and connected inside my body, inside this moment - to have a sense of immediate contact with me, not removed by one step, not distanced by narration.

From this very grounded feeling of being inside my skin, I become more connected with all the space outside me. For one second here. For one second there. But most importantly - for when I need it. I have access. I can come back to me. And be part of it all. And I can stay.

When I need to - like a well trained dog - I stay.

I am here now...for at least some of the moments.