Focus on the now and tell me what problem you have at this moment.

Eckhart Tolle

This is a hectic time of year for most people, and I’m no exception. The stillness I try to enjoy a little of each day often evaporates, leaving me feeling heavy and tired. It doesn’t seem to matter how much I try to rest my body or look after it, my mind is active with to-do lists, gift lists, social calendar lists and often a nice dose of guilt about the things I don’t seem to be able to find time to do, or do well enough, all of which is draining.

Uh-oh, it’s the return of the negative nelly Brian who lives in my brain!  The thing about Brian is, he focuses on all the wrong stuff.  He’s adept at pulling problems out of thin air.  I haven’t been blogging much lately, and have a growing list of topics I’d like to write about (this isn’t one of them).  The lengthening list, combined with all the other things I ‘have’ to or ‘should’ be doing has Brian’s inner chuntering set to maximum, so that my brain feels like it’s taking repeated runs at a concrete wall with no success at breaking through.  Knowing I’m making things worse by not accepting the way things are (busy) doesn’t help.  But today I read a blog post on The Spectacled Bean which did help. 

Ally on The Spectacled Bean wrote last month she was taking a break from blogging in the busy period of December because, in her words,

‘there’s no need to force myself to do something that is, for the most part, fun and is completely voluntary.’ 

A switch flicked, knocking Brian right on his arse and releasing my brain from its entrapment.  I don’t have to blog this month!  Why didn’t I think of that?  Then just as quickly, I found that I wanted to, now here I am, time and words appearing where before there seemed to be none.

I find these shifts amazing because they can happen so quickly. They feel like rays of sunlight breaking through the cloud to warm my face on the bleakest of days. I had a day last week where I was bone weary tired and all I wanted to do was stay home, but I had things to do. I had a class booked and I was meeting a friend, all good things I’d arranged and was looking forward to. I bundled my heavy energy out the door and off we went. I couldn’t find a parking space, I was late for the class, then I couldn’t relax into the class, I met my friend but had to excuse myself to move my car because I’d abandoned it in a short-stay parking spot. I couldn’t find a space again. The charging cable for the car got stuck. The coffee was cooling by the time I got back to my friend, but an hour with her lifted by mood and by the time I left to go home everything felt like it was flowing better (and I managed to sort the charging cable).

 A few days later I was Christmas shopping with my son, and he seemed to be in that same negative thinking pattern and energy.  He just wanted to get home and was rushing everything we did.  We found ourselves in numerous hold-ups: temporary traffic lights, not being able to find what we wanted in the shop, slow queues at the checkout.  I told him about my experience a few days earlier and said we needed to stop rushing, to just accept we were here now doing this shopping and not to dwell on getting home.  It worked!  We had a lovely morning, found everything we needed and then some and were home by lunch.  As Eckhart says, a situation needs to be either dealt with or accepted, why make it into a problem?

Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. 

Eckhart Tolle

My mind can have a tendency to over-think and it loves creating problems (hi Brian). A lot of my posts are positive and focused on the beauty and love in this wonderful world we inhabit, and I’m having more and more success in slowing my mind down and finding quiet spaces, but it’s a process, one that I’m not sure will have an end.  I like to write about the times when my brain gets busy again because it reminds me, and hopefully you, that all of these states are transitory.  When we feel lost, we’ll find ourselves again just around the corner.  When everything seems to be going wrong, we will soon get to a place where we’re counting our blessings.  The trick is in being and accepting right where we are, because there’s really no other place we can be. 

Realise deeply that the present moment is all you ever have.

Eckhart Tolle

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Sometimes we can get so lost in our heads that it helps to be reminded of the amazing world we live in.  If a weekly dose of wonder sounds right up your street, then have a read of my friend Melanie’s Substack blog, Wells of Goodness.  Melanie brightened up my week with beautiful images of some amazing jellyfish and words that felt like a nice warm hug.  I think you’ll like her blog.

I’m in an Eckhart phase at the moment, can you tell? He’s one spiritual teacher I keep coming back to. I find his teachings incredibly hard to understand, but the more time I find in stillness the more sense they make. It’s like the words don’t compute, but then I experience what he’s trying to say and it’s a lightbulb moment; I get it (then I forget it again, and relearn it, and forget again, such is the way of life). I’m reading Practicing the Power of Now, which is like a condensed version of The Power of Now and a good introduction to his work. His podcasts are worth a listen too as his sense of humour comes across and helps convey the teachings. I don’t get paid me for any of these links by the way, I just like you to easily find what I’m writing about, in case you’re interested.

I’ll have a poem for you on Sunday rhyme time but then I’m doing an Ally and vacating blog land until the new year. Enjoy the holidays if you’re celebrating them, if not have a lovely December and I’ll catch up with you all in January.