To Be Totally Present

I would love to think that when I am with you, everything else drops away.  I try.  It is a discipline to be practiced.  I succeed much of the time, but there are times when I drift off and find myself thinking about things I need to do, people I need to contact, peanut butter pattie cookies or what a pretty day it is.  This is drifting.  I am good at drifting away.  That is when I catch myself and through in the anchor again and try to focus on the matter at hand.  If that is you, then you are all there is.


A local therapist and philopher recently posted the following which caused me to reflect on meditation and motherhood for reasons you hopefully will come to understand. 


"To be totally Present with someone is a form of meditation. When we are intensely focused on another person, all thoughts of self drop away and the mind becomes still, like a deep pool in a forest. There is no worry about what to say or do next; thoughts and actions simply arise, express themselves, and return to deep silence. In this moment of LOVE, all separation disappears and PERFECT ONENESS is all that remains."  --Richard Young


True meditation is when everything drops away and there is just the now.  I often think to myself how can there be anything else but the now?  But there looms the potentiality of the future and the reflections on the past which carry us away from the now.  Now is all we have.  Now as I am writing this, there is just the words being formed in my head, flowing from my mind to my fingers to the keyboard to the screen and ultimately to you, the reader of this.  This I am doing in my "now".  You are reading it in your "now".  My now touches you in my future which is now my past but is your present.  Time, you see, is very complicated and yet time truly does not exist.   If you are lost in this reflection, don't dispair.  Time will move on and it does indeed heal.  


No one can be more present than a mother.  Giving birth is probably one of the most intimate and scarey things a woman can do.  There is nothing quite like the love of mother who loves her children.  The ideal mother is one who is present fully for their child.  We can all "mother" by giving birth to those around us of their ideas and aspirations.  We can listen.  We can be present.  


Today, February 24, was my mother's birthday.  Today she would have been 92.  She passed away at 57, younger than I am now.  Her life was never easy what with many physical challenges an alcoholic husband, a developmentally disabled son and me.  But I never felt slighted.  I always knew she loved me with all her heart.  I was told by several other family members and her friends that all she ever wanted was to be a mother.  I was glad I was able to help her with that.    It is because of that unconditional love you gave me that I grew up understanding what true love is.  Happy birthday, Mom.  Thanks for the gift you gave me.


Not sure why, but this sign seemed appropriate to include here.  Maybe if we all "mind the gap" between ourselves and other, between reality and imagined, we would not fall into the gaps between now, the future and the past.