Embodied contentment. A place of complete and utter acceptance of what is, no matter how it is, so complete that you know it in your body to be true. All is well, no matter what. Seems like a lofty goal. How do we get there? Well, first off, there is no there to get to. That’s a trick question. It’s not a destination. You’re sitting on it.

In past posts, I mentioned that the body is always in the present moment. Pleasure, pain, a simple breath - when you are focused on your five senses (your sensory input) you are here, you are now.

When we are in (read: identified with) the mind however, we are either in the past or in the future. In the past, we often experience regret, shoulds/coulds/woulds, anger, sadness. Sometimes,we feel joy and happiness thinking about something good that happened in our lives, but - if that’s your main state, I think you wouldn’t be reading this post. When we are in the future, we worry, we fear, we plan, we get anxious. Our bodies will often display or experience various echoes of these past or future-oriented states of mind in the form of contractions, holding patterns, pain. Our thinking mind only knows past and future. It cannot experience the present moment, because it’s always busy interpreting, trying to identify risks through pattern recognition, always pointing at the present moment, forever locked outside of the actual experience. One image that comes to mind is that of Moses standing atop Mount Nebo in Moab, overlooking the Holy Land: “Therefore, you will see the land only from a distance; you will not enter the land I am giving to the people of Israel.” You can overlook the present from the mind, but you can’t be in it.

So, in order to be in the present moment, you need to be out of your mind. Not in that sense… just out of your interpretive mind. Which means being in your body, in your actual sensory experience. There are plenty of suggestions about how to get better at doing that, some of which were discussed in previous blog posts. I will mention Jon Kabat Zinn’s shower meditation as one way to let yourself experience this. It’s a wonderful way to start or end the day.

If you are in the present moment, by definition you experience joy, love, peacefulness. As Byron Katie always asks, is there any problem right now? No matter what is going on in your life, in this current breath, in this fraction of a second, is there any issue? If you are true to yourself you know that there never is. The trouble begins when you get yourself a future or when you start reflecting on the past. And this applies to the immediate past or future too. They are still past and future, even if it’s only a second backward or forward.

Now, the purpose of the work we do in our sessions is to really change the ratio of how you spend most of your waking moments, so that you end up living more in the present and less in the past or the future. It may not seem like much, but even a 10% shift from thinking (past, future) to being (now, here) can bring a meaningful alleviation of suffering. It’s about reducing the mean time between being moments, times during which we forget and get engrossed in thoughts and loopy feelings, and instead to bring ourselves to a place where we can resiliently rest more and more in just being OK with where we are, who we are, and what is. This does not mean losing all ambition and striving for change. It just means accepting reality exactly as it is, as the springboard whence we can go places - as the platform on which true, lasting change can be built.

Let’s say you have a physical condition that is bugging you: a pain in the neck, figuratively and literally. If you ignore or refuse to recognize the pain, you will encounter suffering. Tara Brach says that pain x resistance = suffering. In other words, pain may be unavoidable, but resistance is entirely optional. In this case resistance can be defined as non-acceptance. For example, if you’ve got that pain in the neck, refusing to admit to yourself that your body hurts, may lead to not taking care of yourself properly, not providing your body with the rest it needs, not looking into getting help from professionals, etc. Now, what does acceptance mean? Does it mean you are accepting your condition from now to eternity? Does it mean anything about the future? No! Absolutely not. All it means is that you are accepting it as it is right now. Perhaps in five minutes it will be different. Perhaps tomorrow you will not have any pain. But right now, it’s here, so why deny it? Oftentimes, the issue is that we believe (and regarding the future, we always believe rather than know ; a belief is a strongly rooted thought, based on past experience, which in many cases gets projected onto a current or future situation) that by admitting something right here right now, we open the door for it to stay this way in the future. Our mind projects the present onto the future and says: “Hey, this is not a good idea… you will be weak, unwanted, imperfect… etc., etc.” (all depending on your core beliefs). But those are all projections. By accepting reality, fully embracing it, right here right now, you are simply stating what is, so you can make room for what needs to arise and happen next.

Now, if we can do this again, and again, and again, consistently, over time, we will effectively live (for the most part) in a state of acceptance, contentment, because at a risk of sounding trite, nothing is ever not the way it is, nothing is never as it shouldn’t be. It’s always, truly always, exactly as it should be, no matter what it is - Trump, Netanyahu, Johnson, and any other pain in the neck included. As Byron Katie likes to point out: “When I argue with reality, I lose, but only 100% of the time.” It doesn’t mean you can’t immediately mobilize yourself to relentlessly work hard to change this reality, but do it when you have acceptance of reality in your pocket. It will be your greatest ally.

Love,

Noam

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