[ Return to Articles ]

Showing Up for Life

by Jackie Kosednar

We live in our heads, missing what is happening in the moment.

Most of us spend our time resisting life. There are many ways we turn off and tune out, especially in this time of advancing technology and world drama. Stress can creep up on us, building in the nervous system and causing problems in the physical body. All diseases are caused by stress. Another word for stress is fear. Stress can build in reaction to what we see around us or to our thoughts about what is going on around us — real or imagined. A healthy body is a body at ease.

From mass pollution to collapsed economies, the world’s massive problems keep us fearing the future. We want to escape the stress of what might happen as the drama increases. Fear of the future can make us spend many precious moments being worried, anxious and depressed, or feeling frozen about things we have no control over.

The paradigm of linear time can also control us. Time seems to go faster and faster. Our culture is preoccupied with the past yet urges us to have every moment of our day planned. We can then, ‘utilize our time more effectively’ to get ahead. We are all conditioned to strategize and plan for the future. We become like rats running around in circles, trying to stay one step ahead of an uncertain future we think we can somehow control. At the same time, we also try to distance ourselves from the past, where all our emotional pain is stored.

The growing amount of drug, alcohol, and food abuse in the world reveals how many people want to escape the stress of future uncertainty or painful unresolved pasts. Addiction is always an attempt to keep pleasure from disappearing. Pleasure signals the brain that all is well so it can stop creating fear and discomfort. We escape into food and over-consumption to feel the relief of pleasure; we have a wide choice of prescription drugs to control our fears and discomfort. Pleasure is fleeting though; only happiness is lasting. Both happen in the present moment. But how do you get there sober, when the truth about life feels uncertain and unpredictable?

The biggest problem is that people think the voice in their head is their voice, so it is true. It acts like it is you. But our brain is a computer. It organizes all incoming information and stores it. The brain then feeds it back to you, making it appear as though there is a person inside, with your voice. There isn’t. The brain can’t really say what is true and what isn’t. It doesn’t operate that way. It is a machine.

The brain’s voice often imitates people you have known: the abusive parent, the logical adult, etc. Your brain doesn’t care if you are upset. It will keep feeding you fear thoughts until you’re in a panic — all because you believe your brain. But it is just a computer you are believing, a pile of organized data. You can never believe your brain, even if you are the most honest person in the world.

Yet, we live in our heads, listening to the computer voices, obeying them and missing what is happening in the moment. Our brain creates the chemicals that make us feel good and the chemicals that keep us unhappy, depending on what we are thinking about. There are also triggers: life suddenly turns out to be different than what we expect, possibly worse. The mind, jolted out of the present moment pleasure of bliss, creates fear chemicals that trigger the adrenalin system. That jolt triggers old memories, or stirs up unconscious fears, which then get re-enacted. We suffer the consequences of the mind struggling and arguing with its self, trying to make sense of something we haven’t even finished experiencing. Yet the suffering has already begun. The only thing that makes us suffer is our own mind.

You may argue and say you are stressed because of your boss or your bills or your kids, and on and on. But it’s not them. It is the thoughts you entertain about them. Our brains are geared for survival. The survival part of the brain is always scanning for enemies and danger. Its job is to make us safe — at any cost. To do that, it has to keep us on guard. There is no doubt; we need to learn to control, guide and direct our minds.

If you are a spiritual seeker you probably know about the practice of ‘mindfulness’ or ‘being present’. When you are present you become an observer. The brain then goes into a different mode, a learning mode. The brain loves to learn and is, in fact, designed to be a learner, a witness, an investigator. It then produces happy chemicals that make us feel comfortable and pleasant with no feelings of threat. The bliss only happens, however, when the brain is learning what it wants to learn.

Life is interesting. You can train the brain to stay in the present moment and become a learning witness. Your presence, which is your ability to be present, will grow and so will your personal power. Notice someone who has a lot of personal power (positive or negative). As that individual walks into a room, his or her presence seems to dominate. The totality of that person’s being is present, including the mind that is watching. If you are scattered, so is your power.

Learning to control your brain is the first step in stress reduction and staying in present time. Your thinking creates all your stress and unhappy feelings that pull you into the past or future. As you practice being present and observing life instead of getting caught up within it, your mind calms and life is a very different game. The moment is always a pleasure.

Feelings and emotions are as fleeting as pleasure. That is when you are present with them. The lie your brain tells you is that the hurt will last forever. It doesn’t. If you keep feeling the hurt, continually noticing all the fuss your brain wants to make about it but not taking it seriously, the hurt dissolves and doesn’t build up. In other words, what we resist persists. In psychological language it is called detachment. You just stay present and don’t allow the brain to create meaning.

Don’t fool yourself, it is not easy to stay in the present moment. It is a life practice. It requires a gentle, consistent willingness to let life unfold at its own pace, in its own way. It requires you train yourself to be an observer, a learner. It requires acceptance, letting things be, going with the flow. It requires you to feel your emotions and let them move on. Happiness happens along the way and increases over time.

When we reduce our suffering by managing our thinking and become more present, we see suffering is not personal. It is a part of the human condition. It is just the way the human brain works.

Can we be present all the time? It's easier to be present when life flows smoothly and when things are going our way. But there is one guarantee in life: nothing ever goes exactly as planned. Returning to the present is what the practice is really about. This is the road out of stress into happiness, no matter what the future may bring.