Life reminds me a lot of high school, where we went to
different rooms with different teachers to learn different
subjects. And then there was homeroom, that place
where we gathered every morning to "check in,"
get the miscellaneous non-"technical"
information we needed to go through the day, greet our
friends and, if we were lucky, get our homework done.
I think life is exactly like that. The classrooms
don't have seats lined up in neat columns and rows,
however. They're just wherever we happen to
be. The teachers are whomever we happen to be with.
And the subjects are as varied as we are. Luckily,
we weren't given a "schedule" on that first day
of life. Most of us would have opted for permanent
truancy, finding an "alternative" school
somewhere on some distant and simpler planet.
The homeroom of life? That inner space where we
check in with ourselves, assimilating all the varied
lessons, sifting through the monumental stack of incoming
data, incorporating that which "feels right"
into our daily lives, relegating that which doesn't to
some archived file, hopefully never to be seen
again. How do we get to our homeroom? By
meditation, breathing, sitting with nature, running,
dancing--whatever it is that puts us in perfect peace and
harmony with ourselves.
And in life, as in school, there are home-room
teachers. Not really teachers, of course, but
administrators and facilitators.
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In our calm and
centered place, we find objects or individuals who
represent our highest wisdom.
They may be faceless
and nameless or may have form, substance and
history. They may be a synthesis of all wise people
we have come across or they may be individuals who lived
and breathed and represent the pinnacle of some quality we
value.
These teachers may play different roles in our life.
For example, there are four separate energies I connect to
when I meditate. Although I often think of them
collectively, they each represent one of the four major
divisions of life: Mental, Emotional, Spiritual, and
Physical. One, representing the Mental sphere,
helped me open doors I didn't know where there, allowing
me to learn that oneness with all creation is
possible. Another, representing the Spiritual realm
and through his teaching of unconditional love, has helped
me experience that oneness. A third, representing
the Emotional, well, he has given me practical advice for
living that oneness.
And yet the main lessons I've learned from this third
teacher are very simple, so simple that I almost missed
them: the first is to allow and the second is to
live in the moment. Sounds easy, doesn't it?
That's what I thought, too.
After being exposed to the teachings of an Eastern
philosopher, I found that I could remember only one
phrase: "All we need do is allow."
Allow what? He didn't say, so I concluded that I had
to figure out that part by myself (we all know how
contrary some teachers can be--they want us to do all the
work!).
I started by trying to finish the sentence. Allow
others to be who they are? Of course, but that
seemed limiting. Allow others to be? Better,
but not quite right. Allow others. Allow them
what? And that brought me back to allow, just
allow. The same thing happened with "Allow me
to be who I am." No matter how I tried to
finish the sentence, I kept coming back to that simple
word, all by itself, no qualifiers.
No qualifiers? Just allow everything and
everyone? But some of those people and things are a
little crazy. Do I allow them to be crazy?
Well, why not? For some reason that I can't
understand, they have chosen to be crazy. It needn't
affect me, not if I can understand there is a lesson in
craziness for them. I have my own lessons and I know
I would like others to allow me to learn those lessons the
way I need to learn them, the way that I will learn them.
Allowing includes allowing me to be me. And by
allowing myself the full range of human emotions, by being
a person who loves, gets angry, knows joy, feels
resentment, cries, feels tired, experiences satisfaction,
in fact by feeling every emotion and admitting (and
therefore owning) that emotion, then I can be a
"perfect" human being. For that whole
range of emotions is part of the human experience, and
keeping those "unacceptable" (by whom?) feelings
bottled up, I'm only short-changing myself.
And I've noticed that people who never allow themselves to
get angry are really always angry, the proverbial fire keg
ready to explode. Yet how many times have I noticed
that "getting it out of my system," through
yelling or tears, does actually that, it gets that feeling
out of my system! Experiencing the feeling isn't
bad, it's living it, staying in that negative mood that's
unhealthy.
And allowing ourselves to feel, really feel, the emotion
we're experiencing is what living in the moment is all
about. Yet there's a big difference between living
in the moment and living for the moment. There's no
sense of purpose in living for, while living in allows us
to take all the information we need from this moment,
whether it be joyful or sad, and bring it into our next
moment.
I found myself worrying about staying in the moment,
worrying that I wouldn't "move on" with my
life. But the more experience I get at living in the
moment, I find that I make better, more informed decisions
about what the next moment will be. Better decisions
than when I spend all of this moment worrying about what
happened yesterday or what's going to happen in the
future.
And moments are controllable! When I live in the
moment, the decision to stay, or move on, is definitely
something that is in my hands--and moments I can handle.
Yet each moment is a forever, when we are truly in
it. Learning to allow and to live in the moment is,
I'm finding, anything but simple. Or perhaps I
should say it's incredibly simple, just not easy!
It's hard to break the old habits of fear and guilt, but
the more I can do that, the more assured I am that that's
the way I want to live. How do you start? By
noticing where your attention is at any given
moment. For example, this moment, right now, is
about reading this article. If you can remember what
I've written, the essence of it, then you're living in the
moment. If you can't, then take a deep breath and
read it again. Then check in. Do you remember the
gist now? Congratulations! And welcome to the
moment!
Louise
Morganti Kaelin was a Life Success Coach who partnered with
others to
help them turn their dreams into reality. She passed
away in 2011.
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