How to Live in the Moment if the Moment Sucks

Over and over we’re hearing an almost universal message from the spiritual leaders of our time, and that message is to live in the moment.

Eckhart Tolle calls it the eternal now, and says, “Realize deeply that the present moment is all you will ever have. (Cause it’s always the present moment, get it?)

Abraham, through channel Esther Hicks says, “Life is a series of delicious moments.”

Wayne Dyer adds, “You have everything you need for complete and total happiness right now.”

And a lot of us scratch our heads and say, “Huh?” Because let’s face it, sometimes, our “right now” stinks on ice. So how do we go from a present moment that is rather miserable, to being happy in the moment? What if our “now” includes a horrible disease, or the loss of a loved one, or something awful like that? How does anyone find any sort of contentment in moments like those?

And why would anyone want to?

Well that’s the first thing to tackle, isn’t it? Why would you want to find contentment, peace, even happiness, in the horrible moments of your life? I’m going to tell you why, and the short reason is this. Every single experience in life comes to us for vital reasons. The bad times come to teach us. They come to push us forward to where we’re supposed to be. They come to bring clarity about what we really want. And they come because they have to come. The reality we live in this moment is the only way things can possibly be in this given space, in this given moment, in this particular reality. And everything that happens fits together like the pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle. If one piece was shaped differently, the entire puzzle would fall apart.

So the bad moments, the challenges, the losses come because they can’t not come. But these moments can last for as long or as short a period of time (time being an illusion) as we choose to allow. The more miserable we are in the bad moments, the longer we’re stuck in them. Only by finding contentment and peace within the moment, can we ever hope to move past it.

So that’s the why, that’s the reason to find contentment and peace in the horrible moments of life: because they’re going to stay with you until you do. But what about the how? How do you make peace with something awful?

1. Look for the Lesson There’s always, always a deep spiritual message being whispered to us in everything that happens. In the loss of a loved one, something I’ve experienced many times, I’ve found more spiritual growth than at any other period of my life. (We’ll do a blog on death and dying another time, soon I promise.) But the core to remember is that this is that person’s journey, not yours. There are reasons they came, and reasons they went when they did. Reasons that involve the fulfillment of their own purpose, their own plan. And in fact, everything that comes to you in life is a part of your own journey, your own plan. Everything. If you can accept that everything happens for a reason, and then begin to seek the lessons within the hardship, meditate on them, peel away the layers and get deeper and deeper, journal it all, you will in short order begin to realize that this hardship brought a lot of blessings with it.

2. Look for the Joy There was joy in your life before the tragedy or illness or loss, wasn’t there? That joy didn’t come from outside of you, it came from within. Your capacity to feel happiness is your own. You hang it on events and circumstances beyond yourself, but the truth is, it’s all yours. That capacity for joy is still there, and the earth is still filled with things that can bring you smiles, here and there. Look for those things. Make it an absolute quest to find things that help you feel a little bit better, that give you a little relief, that take your focus away from the awfulness. The more you do this, the easier it will get.

3. Surrender Instead of struggling against the bad thing, (we all talk about battling cancer, fighting addiction, beating depression) just relax into it. Know that it came for a reason, that it will stay for as long as it has to, and that it will go when the time and your vibration are able to release it. Relax into that. Really accept it. Trust that there is a plan, and that all is exactly the way it’s supposed to be right now. It is what it is. It is the only way it can be. And we’ll understand the reasons eventually. The more we can stop pushing against our obstacles, the more at peace we are, and the more at peace we become right here and now, the more easily we can expand on to the next phase, and the next.

Gregg Braden talks about this very subject and more in this half hour interview that will be a blessing to all who watch it. It’s worth the time, I promise.