Michelle Conaway

For several years now I have been practicing Present Moment Awareness.  Eckhart Tolle has been a huge facilitator of this in my life along with many other present moment awareness gurus.  Meditation is another resource that can bring me back to the NOW.  If I meditate every morning, before anyone else gets up asking for stuff, I do well.  Or. . . as well as can be expected for a mom that home-schools and has her 23 year old daughter back at home.  But I try.  I really try.

I have had the great realization that NOW is the only reality.  Now is where we experience life.  But somehow I lose hold of this truth during my busy days-schooling, chauffeuring, healing, counseling, cooking, grocery shopping, taxiing kids to practice and helping out elderly parents.  Somehow, I seem to lose sight that there ever was a present moment to begin with.

Sometime in the hectic chaos of the day I will stop to notice my 5 senses (that is if I can remember what my 5 senses are).  This helps a lot when I can remember that we experience life through sight, sound, smell, touch and taste.  But a lot of the time I find that I have forgotten my 5 sense all together.  I suck the blood off of my cut finger steaming forward with the flash card drill for my oldest son.  I gulp down the breakfast as I drive my kids to this activity or that.  I tune out the beautiful song of the bird outside my window as I rush to finish the lemonade day sign for my youngest.  I don’t even notice that it is a beautiful day outside as I take down my elderly fathers grocery list over the phone.  I don’t notice the fragrant flowers growing in my back yard as I try to figure out the problem with my squash plant shriveling up.

Why is it that I can’t seem to just stop and smell the roses?  With Mommy this and Mommy that (at the same time no less) how am I to be present with each child.  They deliberately compete for my attention.  How do I stay present with each one, giving them their due full attention?

But . . . sometimes I do.  Yes, sometimes I do.  Sometimes I remember that I have 5 senses and I stop and check in with what is happening NOW in this moment.  It is bliss.  Nothing else matters in the world when I am able to do this.

My search for enlightenment is deterred at times by Mommy hood it seems.  But maybe Mommy hood is brought to me to give me practice.  When I practice this (and I have been able to for a whole day at time) everything around me seems to change.  Everyone else slows down as well.  It makes me wonder if they are just acting off of my energy.  Maybe they are looking to Mommy to gage how they should spend THEIR present moment.  When I stop and notice, stop and enjoy, stop and breath it seems that everyone else does too.

I want to do this more.  Life is richer when I am here and now.  Life is more fun when I am not thinking about my next step.  And you know what?  The next step always presents itself without my thinking about it.  It always does!  When I am living in the present, the future always takes care of itself and usually much better than I could have planned it.  It seems that things kind of rearragne themselves in order to conspire to the good for all.

Today, I plan to be here NOW.  I plan to consciously choose to be present to the life that is presenting itself NOW.  No fears about tomorrow or even later today for that matter.  To be present with me and those around me.  And to see that the children and my busy life are here to provide practice.  Practice at living my life through the five senses that provide my experience of life.  I plan to question the thoughts that arise telling me it should be anything different than as it IS NOW.  It is all perfect in this moment.  It is precious really.  Because it is the only guarantee that I have for life.  There are no guarantees that I will still be here 5 minutes from now, so I seize this moment to be present, to be happy and to enjoy what is around me and to turn my experiences, ALL of my experiences into  joy.  I can do that with my mind.  I can do that with my thinking.  And I can do that by being present to and in acceptance of what IS.