Peace

While not without a couple more computer bumps, this has been a good day. I slept until I awakened naturally, remembering several dreams. I wrote for several hours, and I took a walk in our beautiful 50+ degree day as our snow rapidly melted.  It felt good to move, and after a month of bitter cold, I loved being able to walk comfortably in a short jacket with the sun on my face. I ate a delicious healthy dinner, and then I watched the Winter Olympics.  I am an Olympics junkie, and I am particularly fond of the ice skating events in the winter games, part of tonight's program.

When I sat to write, I was totally still.  My mind, which races so much of the time, was quiet.  It was quite remarkable, as if I were ending a meditation rather than starting one. The white stillness is quite a gift, and while I truly relish the exquisiteness, I was also curious.  Why so still tonight?

I believe that just BEing all day opened the door.  I flowed effortlessly through the day without thinking or planning, just following my inspiration, moment to moment.  I was being me.  This seems to me how it should be all day, every day--the way we were meant to be.  I cannot think of anything more important to say than being at peace is truly heaven on earth, and today I am most grateful to be there.

Post script: The morning after I wrote this post, NPR reported on a new study done on "happiness."  Participants in the study were given an app to report when they felt most happy.  After reporting their happiness, they were asked what they had been doing.  Activities in which people were totally engaged generated the most happiness.  I called it "peace" but I sure was happy too.

Actually Being Still and Knowing

This morning I did what I said yesterday I was going to do: "be still!" and "know!"  Well, actually, I spent a good bit of time attempting to "be still!" but actually very little time doing so.  I've often quoted Yoda, "There is no try.  There is do or no do."  I guess the truth  is that "being still!" was a "no do" for much of the two hours during which I dedicated myself to that activity.

As a bit of background, I went with a friend to the movies last night.  The movie my friend picked was "About Time," a time travel film, which ended with the message to fully live each day as if it were your very last.  As often as I've written variations on "being present," you might imagine that the movie's message resonated with me, and it did.  Except...

For whatever reason, instead of following the film's message, I spun off into a totally different place.  Instead of using the precious moments I had with my friend in the present, I went into quite a pity party about how I'd squandered my life (the past.)  It's not as if I took my inheritance and went off in prodigal fashion for a life of partying and waste.  Most of the time, the decisions I've made have been the best in the moment.  I probably haven't been as prayerful about all decisions as I might have, but I am still "in lesson" on that.

As I bounced like a Ping-Pong ball from the past to the future and back, I painfully looked at my life from judgment of where I thought I should be.  Everything that most of us have been told about life planning is that I should be at the pinnacle of my career with assets and relationships accumulated to carry me through the rest of my life. I really don't have much to show for what our society would describe as a life well lived.

I tell that story because history drove my "be still!" time this morning.  As I struggled to be still, my pity party continued.  I replayed decision points in my life which had led to this point in time. Then, I beat myself up about it.  This wasn't "be still! and know! that I am God." And that is what I heard when I was finally still.

"Be love! Experience joy! If God accepts my life with love, why can I not find that a place in my heart for me to love my life?"  Almost as an after-thought came a parting message: to remember what I've written about "forgiveness." 

I booted up my computer and looked at what I'd written about forgiveness (10/3/13.)  The gist of it was that how I "be Love" is through forgiveness, including forgiving myself. My job isn't judgment of my life: it is loving kindness and compassion.  That is what I know when I "be still! and know! that I am God."