Sunday night, I lay in the grass by the lake watching the sun set behind a line of thick trees on the horizon. The air was fresh and warm, enveloping my skin like a silk sheet. The water looked like gleaming liquid metal with a pastel sheen. Sail boats coasted slowly between the pane of silver water and the lines of dusty lavendar clouds cutting across the flaming fucsia and apricot sky.
Overwhelming contentment entered my blood stream, calming and elating every cell, until I settled into a natural inner silence, an ever present listening.
Two days later, I developed pain in my back that reached a crescendo the following day. I went into the emergency room in agony. What a different moment! Every cell in my body was flooded with pain. The only thing entering my blood stream was the IV drip. Instead of lying in soft green grass, I was being threaded through a CT scanner. Instead of watching the sun paint the sky, I watched flourescent lights glare on bare walls as nurses and doctors came and went.
“How would you rate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10?” the doctor asked. I answered the question many times that day. In some moments, I was a 10 and in others, only a 2, the merciful consequence of pain medication.
This seems to be the question we are always asking ourselves as a way of judging the quality of the present moment. Is this moment happy or sad? How good do I feel right now? When the answer is positive, we relax. When the answer is very positive, we naturally sink into the present moment, and the mind settles. On the other hand, when the pain crosses a certain threshold, perhaps at 4 or 5, we reject the moment and yearn for something else.
Deep contentment grows from being present with things as they are. But I think there’s something even more important than this. In loving the moment as it is, one practices unconditional love. This unconditional love for now, for nature and reality, then arises in your relationships. When you can be fully present when times are good, and when times are bad, you can be fully present for those you love. When you can see beyond transient circumstances into the fundamental okayness that permeates life, you can see beyond someone’s transient characteristics into their fundamental okayness.
Even in the midst of terrible pain, there was beauty in the present moment. There were friends and family expressing immense kindness, doctors and nurses fulfilling their altruistic professions, and medicines working.
“Love the moment. Flowers grow out of dark moments. Therefore, each moment is vital. It affects the whole. Life is a succession of such moments and to live each, is to succeed.”
~ Corita Kent
