be.here.now.

I was having a conversation with a friend earlier this week and she was encouraging me to practice being more present. I agreed with her wholeheartedly. Not sooner than "yeah, totally" left my lips my brain had taken off on a spiral How am I going to get anything done if I'm just being present? If I don't think about the future, am I just going to look back 10 years from now and realize that I've done nothing? That's one of my biggest fears, I'm not sure how this is going to work???? She saw me up in my head, freaking out, and asked what was going on. I verbalized the dialogue. She looked at me and laughed. "So, you're worrying right now, about how in the future, you'll look back and realize you haven't done anything?" yeah. Its as ridiculous as it sounds.

Elizabeth Gilbert says it this way in her book Eat Pray Love:

Here's what I caught myself thinking about in meditation this morning. I was wondering where I should live once this year of traveling has ended. I don't want to move back to New York just out of reflex. Maybe a new town, instead. Austin is supposed to be nice. And Chicago has all that beautiful architecture. Horrible winters, though. Or maybe I'll live abroad. I've heard good things about Sydney ... If I lived somewhere cheaper than New York, maybe I could afford an extra bedroom and then I could have a special meditation room! That'd be nice, I could paint it gold. Or maybe a rich blue. No, gold. No, blue...

Finally noticing this train of thought, I was aghast. I thought: Here you are in India, in an Ashram in one of the holiest pilgrimage sites on earth. And instead of communing with the divine, you're trying to plan where you'll be meditating a year from now in a home that doesn't yet exist in a city yet to be determined. How about this, you spastic fool-how about you try to meditate right here, right now, right where you actually are?

The Lord says it this way.

"only in returning to me and resting in me will you be saved. In quietness and confidence is your strength." -isa 30:15


(my friend, Hope, praying on the roof of an ashram we visited while in India)