One More Moment

It’s very easy to think that all these personal and spiritual development practices and master manifesting techniques are “supposed” to produce an existence that is free from all undesirable scenarios and hardships. Almost as if you can achieve some state where nothing bad ever happens.

While conscious recognition of your behavior patterns may certainly assist you in avoiding many unnecessarily re-occurring “negative” life experiences, I believe it would be totally unrealistic — and even delusional — to think that you won’t encounter any undesirable challenges ever again.

A healthier “goal” is of course the perspective that allows you to view the hurdles as lessons — opportunities to grow and to learn as you came here to do — as opposed to disasters meant to undermine or destroy you.

Isn’t equipping yourself to better handle a new challenge a desirable evolution beyond the over-reaction and sloppy muddling through of the past?

You likely have themes among your karmic life lessons — repeating scenarios —

You date the same kind of loser over and over again
You make the same mistakes
You start strong but fall off before the follow through
You drag your baggage from one period of your life to the next

You know — that wonderful definition of madness as “doing the same thing and expecting a different result.”

I don’t believe that just because you’ve solved a certain problem one time that you will never encounter it again — actually, I believe it’s often like you’re playing a video game, where each level you successfully reach can bring bigger badder faster uglier versions of the monsters.

Don’t be disappointed that you can’t always eradicate the problems once and for all — there’s great peace and power to be had by simply becoming more adept at recognizing a graduated version of a lesson you’ve already learned and applying your wisdom to change current and future experiences:

You can avoid another round all together
You can decrease the duration of the lesson
You can move through it with fewer interruptions or lesser disruptions
You can reduce the effects that may have been devastating in the past to only mildly annoying

“This can’t be happening!”
Oh, if only saying it was enough to make it so…
You can handle anything thrown at you and still be okay.

I love Meryl Streep’s portrayal of author Isak Denisen, Karen von Blixen in the film version of Out of Africa — it’s a gorgeous study in the perseverance of the present moment — how to be transcendentally existentially OK, in spite of the trials and tribulations that just keep coming…

There’s a wonderful moment near the end of the film — after Karen has survived decades of gender discrimination and feminist humiliation, financial devastation, infidelity and syphilis, the coffee plantation has burned to the ground, and she’s finally surrendered to being driven — literally — out of Africa. She sits in her empty home, having sold off all her possessions, quietly smoking and looking through those last few books waiting to be boxed up, and probably thinking What could possibly go wrong now? What could be left?

The Baron comes to tell her the news that the love of her life has just been killed in a plane crash.

There’s a bit of dialogue that I can (almost) quote verbatim:

Karen says “When it gets so bad, that I think I can’t go one moment more… I do. And then I know I can do anything.”

To me, this is one of those moments when you are so reduced to surviving in the extreme present — the next tick of the second hand on the clock, the next breath — that just breathing is all that is required of you to “succeed.”

No thinking, no problem solving, no traveling into past or future, but simply taking that next breath. And when you make it through that one, you take another. And another.

The Common Denominator of All Living Moments

If all you can do in this moment is breathe — just breathe.

Slade's signature

April 26, 2009 | by Slade Roberson | Filed Under Power

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Comments

7 Responses to “One More Moment”

Jody on April 26th, 2009 5:13 pm

This made me remember our reading (and, folks, GET A READING!) when you mentioned the presence of “Kenya” coming up for me, with no idea why. I then told you that I’d lived in Kenya for three years in high school, AND my first novel (NO REGRETS, Dial Books for Young Readers) was set there. This week, while working on my spiritual memoir, I wrote about my time in Kenya, and realized something even more profound….so, hey, cool that you mention this movie, THIS WEEK.

I also concur with what you say about how bad things happen even while you’re
on a spiritual journey….for me, when they occur now, it’s for a much shorter duration. If I make an effort to see it as a lesson, with meaning, I feel as if God–or the divine–meets me halfway. Miracle of miracles…..the pain is just GONE.
KL- Prana Flow Yoga NZ on April 26th, 2009 6:43 pm

One breath at a time… as a yogi, I gotta love that

You remind us all of such an important point… it’s not that life becomes a calm, glittering ocean forever, it’s that we learn how to ride the waves and the storms rather than being constantly thrown into the water and tossed about.

In the midst of the darkest hour, coming to the breath gives us access to our Divinity, and to the connectedness of All. It reminds us that this too will pass.

So simple.

So true.
Barbara on April 26th, 2009 7:23 pm

Slade,

I started yoga in 1983. It was always an on an off activity for me (sorry KL!), but the physical manifestation of the practice of yoga always kind of a kept a hold on me without my conscious awareness or even that much knowledge of the sutras.

The yogic practice of conscious breath followed me everywhere. When I’d be at work and upset was dragging me places I just didn’t want to go, I could be seen pacing while heard muttering under my breath, “breathe, just breathe”, until I could get a grip. So common to my employees, they bought me a yoga t-shirt imprinted with BREATHE for Christmas one year.

Often the thought to breathe is much like the first intuitive thought one has, only now, due to the frequency of reminder, it no longer seems a whisper, but a definite commanding stop sign.

I also remember the day I came home to find someone had given away my paperback copy of the book “Out of Africa” and how I needed to breathe thru my sadness, dismay, anger at the loss of the well- loved book. Not that I couldn’t have another, but that one was the one with my realizations held within.

Lovely in it’s simplicity and clarity, as usual, Slade, as are both Jody’s and KL’s connections to your post. Thanks and hello to you too, ladies.
ginger on April 27th, 2009 1:50 am

Lately I have been referring to this “survival instinct” when it kicks in, as an “Involuntary Muscle” reflex. You don’t know where it came from, and there definitely is no time to think about it. I don’t know if your heart skips a beat or you Stop Breathing or you take a big breath and just go for it!
Whether in Dire straits or spiritual Bliss, having that place within, that I call home and where I can breath freely, is always where the heart is.
There is something to be said for people who come together in times of “disaster” out of necessity and “survival”. People are shown to display true brotherly Love and human Kindness. So the appearance of such events may shake you to the core, but the actual realization it holds, is grand!

OnE LoVE
G.
Alane on April 29th, 2009 6:56 pm

Wow, I just went through something like this recently in the Grand Canyon, pinned in a tent for 24 hours with 60 mph winds- just getting through moment to moment of waiting for the next big wind gust, holding the tent up, re-fixing guy lines as they got loose. I prayed for a miracle, and moment followed moment until the winds starting dying down. Living through perhaps the scariest night of my life and coming out the other side in one piece- and at peace. Now I have that memory to refer to in the future. Thanks for writing! -Alane
J Henry on April 30th, 2009 2:50 pm

Wonderful article! Reminds me of Viktor Frankls “Man’s Search for Meaning”… as long as you can hold onto hope, you can not only survive but overcome!

I came to that book, and the lesson you allude to, in one of the most devastating and dark places of my life- a German prison. Falsely imprisoned due to lies and slander, I refused to accept the easy way out- lying to free myself. I lost everything I had, my dog, my house, and my savings and retirement funds to pay for the best lawyers. Saying it was rough would be an understatement, and survival became an everyday instinct.

Looking back on it all, it was the exact situation I needed to develop and grow. Breathe through it? By the end of my internment, I had learned to embrace this disastrous obstacle. Amazingly, the efforts of many people I knew, and many I didn’t know, had such an effect that I was released four years earlier than planned.

If all you can do is breathe through it to survive, then start huffing and puffing and hugging that obstacle in your life, because it’s exactly what you need- after all, you created it!
ginger on May 1st, 2009 4:15 pm

J. Henry,

Great Post! am huffing, puffing, hugging on through every detail of my creation!
God Bless!

OnE LoVE!
G.