“They say that life is short; however, if you lead a life of quiet desperation it is anything but short.”
— Mike Mahler
Desperation comes when you forget the reason you are alive. “Why?” becomes your constant companion as opposed to “Wow!”.
A desperate state indeed … full of scramble and struggle. I’ve been there, you’ve been there, we’ve been there.
Life, perhaps, is therefore a search to go beyond this struggle and find significance.
The secret to more Wow and less Why?
Show up to where Wow lives – and that is this moment in time.
Hopefully this won’t come as a shock to you, I think my voice has joined so many in banging on about this for a while now.
However …
We are demanding consumers. We demand now entertain us, fulfil us, that it’s better and brighter than our past and our plans.
We may know of the power of mindfulness and presence, but we rarely show up to now innocent, fresh, free of expectation – and Wow cannot reveal itself to us unless we come to it naked.
Even seasoned monks get tied up in this trap – of trying to modify the moment to make it memorable, to try and make it more.
It’s a total trap because the secret to more Wow in life is not to make it, but to let it come to you.
Sure: there are a ton of useful practices ranging from my practice of Ascension meditation to being in nature that you can put in place more often to get more Wow.
You put yourself in the way of Wow by making time for it, through the gentle discipline of rituals of approaching now and spirit, and detaching from the past/future and your head.
But the discipline is not creative. The discipline is showing up, the practice is innocence: to let go, to not control, to release your insistences on the moment.
You see:
We’re in a race to become better. We live lives with far too few glimpses above the fog and clouds that are painful or perfect pasts and fearful or fantastic futures – as Jamie Wheal, the Flow author, puts it.
Can you simply arrive here, without demands and insistences, without baggage, free from conditions?
Can you let now be enough? As it is, unmodified and pure, and as you find it?
Of course you can – but “Will you?” is the question.
Receptivity not creativity. Aligning not Making.
Not through having something different happen, but simply through having a direct and honest conversation, a clean and clear connection, with the moment you are in.
Enough not More.
Just this. Not different. Not when you get “there” … but simply as you are, in the presence of now.
Know that it’s never about changing what you find when you show up, but the full and complete embracing of it.
By not seeking, you find. By opening your eyes to all, you see.
Wow is now.
And you can all do that.
Go well!
Arjuna