Life is a Present, but Only if You are Present

Being mindful allows you to track down what appear to be subconscious processes, disentangle them and bring them out in the open. Say you lie in bed, your partner is fast asleep but since you are lying next to each other, you can feel a touch on your body. You feel sexual energy rising in you, you feel relaxed because it is Saturday and you have a long weekend coming up, you are touching yourself, you picture your favorite sexual act and you effectively begin to masturbate.

When you think about it, there are actually many things going on in this scene. A lot happens between the moment you wake up and the time you masturbate. Waking up is obviously out of your control, as is the experience of the touch of your partner and the fact that sexual energy is rising in you. You may be a person who always feels sexual energy most intensely when you are relaxed. Knowing the mood you are in helps you understand how you are likely to react. Once you are mindful of what is going on inside, you suddenly realize that you have a choice in touching yourself and a choice in creating exciting sexual mental images. Before you were just on an autopilot that led to masturbation even though many of the processes weren't subconscious at all, be mindful gives you a choice in what experience and lets you experience everything more intensely.

Try to be present when something is happening inside you, say sexual energy surge in you like in in our example. How do you react to this energy surge? How is your mood when you experience it? Are you angry or pleased, anxious or relaxed, are you in a good or in a bad mood? Try to be present when these processes run, or otherwise you will be just dragged around by these emotions and energy and will end up acing like a slave. Are you a master of your emotions and actions or are you controlled totally by the robot inside?

To become a master of your emotions and your actions can be learned. Try to be present when these energies surge in you, feel how different emotions work on your body, and try to understand why you have these reactions. With your total attention and total presence, with the gaze of your love, these emotions calm down like a purring cat. Please practice this by yourself, you basically can see the transition of your emotions in action. You can experience how pain is transformed into love and joy; anxiety into peace; anger into forgiveness.

Please don’t suppress your emotions. Accept them as they are. Try not to judge them and label them as good or bad. Take them all and in experience them as they are. The problems for most of people is that they are controlled and dragged around by their emotions. The emotional, mental and physical dominos are falling and afterwards the outcome gets labeled as good or bad. When something is labeled as good, you are happy to experience what is going on and you want them to stay with it as long as possible. On the contrary, when the emotions are labeled as bad, you don’t want them, you try to get rid of them and you afterwards beat yourself or someone else up over them.

If you really watch these emotions and observe them carefully, you will find that, as a matter of fact, these emotions come and go by themselves. But if you resist them, suppress them, or try to control them, they will stay longer. Just be present with them, you will be able to transcendent these emotions, understand them and yourself, and experience life

With your presence, the intensity of every emotion will become strong and you will also gain back the feeling of liveliness. Do you recall how you experienced life as a child? Can you feel the breeze when you walk in nature? Can you see the flowers blooming all over the places? Can you taste the flavor of food? Have you ever experienced talking to your loved one and feel the love flowing back and forth between you two? Have you ever experienced the pain when someone you really care is walking out of your life? Yes, these situations trigger our emotions and sensations. If you are present in these happenings, you will connect with the lively energy of these things. You cannot help feeling that life is wonderful and exciting because you are lively there participating every thing.

Dear friends, please get out of your mind and your auto-pilot and join life instead. Leave the roller-coaster of emotions, just experience the first push, the psychological trigger and experience how the stimulus is fading naturally when you just observe. Life is a present and a blessing, but only when you are present will you be able to get it. You have lived in the illusionary world full of worry and fear long enough. Join the real world and be ready to receive your present.

By Christian and Su Zhen