"You Must Be Present to Win"

"You can't make joy or well-being happen, but you can create the conditions in which those states more naturally arise."  - James Baraz from Awakening Joy We are into our second week of a 7 week Journey of Awakening in which we are focusing on ways to bring greater joy and well-being into our lives. Last week we said that intention is an effective catalyst to activate more joy in our lives - noting that expectation and being on the lookout for what we want can be generative of the hoped-for experience.  How simple, yet how effective! This week's practice is equally simple - though not as easy perhaps.  This week we are seeking to become more present, more mindful as we go through our days. It's about awareness - the practice of keeping the lens of conscious awareness open as we go through our daily experiences so that we might enlarge our capacity to "be" with life, as witness, rather than as judge. Our normal, and oh so mortal, way of dealing with life is to grasp and cling to the pleasant experiences and shun, resist or deny the unpleasant stuff.  How human of us! The problem with this modus operandi is that it by its insistence that life be a certain way we severely narrow our capacity for enjoying life. We confine the possibility of well-being to some moment in the future when our ducks of desire finally fall in line with our preferences.  Have you noticed what a moving target this ideal moment is? And even if we get the pot of gold and the rainbow on the same day, our frustration will soon return when we try to hold onto it, which of course we can't.  The pleasant situation passes. When facing difficult situations we reverse the reaction and deny, resist and try to push it away. We make stories about what the challenge means about us and the awful ramifications for our future. Of course as we are running these dire commentaries in our heads, we have closed off our capacity to simply be with the situation and allow space for life to breathe  and reveal its transformational potential.   The practice of mindfulness can relieve this suffering and open us to well being. As author James Baraz puts it: We learn to enjoy pleasant experiences without holding onto them when they pass (which they will) and we are able to remain present with unpleasant experiences without fearing they will always be this way (which they won't). The natural joy, that you and are capable of experiencing, is not conditional except to the extent that we make our sense of well-being dependent on externals. Life situations do not define us or change our essence.  Being mindful can help us differentiate our experience from our identity. Through mindfulness, you can notice your feelings, rather than being your feelings.    You can notice sadness rather than being sad. You are not your experiences; you are the one who has experiences. In this space of awareness, that restores your capacity to observe life, there is space for being, even well-being.