Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans

“Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.” - John Lennon It’s a funny old thing, life. It’s happening here and now and more often than not, most people aren’t aware of it. They miss out on life itself, thinking and planning about some other moment, some moment in which they believe life will happen.

Do you do that? Is your life going on right under your nose while you are elsewhere?

Unless you are present and alive to life, to this moment, you will miss out. And no one has an infinite amount of time to get to the task of really, truly living. It’s something you need to get onto very very soon.

If I may be so bold, I would ask:

What do you think it’s going to take for you to wake up to this?

What is it going to take for you to realise that your life is ending one moment at a time, and you are somewhere else, lost in your head?

When are you going to stop wasting a single moment adrift in the past or future or some other location, wishing, dreaming that you were anywhere but here?

When are you going to make the most of each and every moment?

Please do. Please wake up to your own life, take it and go. Live it fully. It requires so little, just your attention applied now. Such a small, simple sacrifice, and you get so much.

If you don’t, who will? If not now, when?

ps. if you don't know how - just ask. It really is a simple thing.

What meditation has given me

My life has changed immeasurably since I came to learn a simple, easy meditation technique, and actually used it every day. It still surprises me, the power of sitting down every day and closing my eyes.

I really feel like I have become the person I always knew I was, but just couldn’t guarantee I could be.

In the past I would get stuck in these mental loops of thinking and worrying. I knew all about the worries and the fears, it was just that I couldn’t get out of them. They seemed to possess me. I would wake up worrying about something I said the previous day or worrying about what would happen in the upcoming, or about my bank balance.

I was constantly saying one thing to one person and another thing to another person. I was trying to be all things to all people. I would get stressed, so easily. I would lose my cool over the smallest things.

In no way was I a basket case, there was just plenty of room for more enjoyment and ease. Which I now have, which continues to grow.

I also seem to have found my purpose. I had a wonderful life, I had ticked all the boxes on my “to do and to have” list, and yet I was not content. It was a confusing time - my tick list said I should be happy and yet there was a growing unease which said I wasn’t.

The small act of closing my eyes every day and becoming more and more present has meant everything that I do is based in a satisfaction or a sense of wholeness and fulfilment.

There is no more idea that there is something else, that I’m missing out on something, the question “what am I doing here?” doesn’t appear. There is no worry, no fear, no unease.

In many ways, nothing has changed. I literally have gotten nothing from meditation - but everything that is not me has fallen away.  In one word, meditation has given me authenticity… and freedom from worry and fear… and purpose, meaning and satisfaction… and real enjoyment of life… and a million other things

It’s the smallest thing, to become present, to learn to meditate, to actually practice but it gives you so much.

Why not? What have you got to lose?

Simple and joyful, all the way

The truth is simple, and the living of it will make you laugh. If it’s not simple, it’s simply not the truth.

What I love about the meditation practice I practice - The Bright Path Ishayas' Ascension - is that it is the most simple thing I know, and it isn’t serious at all. The living of truth is a serious business, yet anytime I get serious, there is no truth.

Every holy woman and man I have ever met have been remarkable in the amount of joy they exude. Even when talking about the most serious of topics, the lightness of their being infuses every moment.

No one who has a full and rich experience of inner peace takes themselves seriously for a second.

It’s funny how I thought in order to be free, it involved some complicated knowledge, the gaining of which was a serious pursuit. I remember when I met my first Ishayas. I was wondering about their integrity because they seemed so simple, so innocent. “What could they teach me?” I thought. It turned out to be a lot.

Seriousness and lack of simplicity has become a really good indicator of where I’m off, where I’m complicating things.

It is very very simple just to stop, be aware and sink into this moment. How wonderful is it to know that is all peace requires? It makes any hard work and struggling to seriously attain something just a little bit funny.

How wonderful is it that life can be this simple? How wonderful that experiencing peace in this moment is this simple?