How much Presence/Life Force/Essence flows through your work every day, whether you are a business owner or employee, a homemaker or retired, or other?
Without some awareness of who you really are, your workday, while it may be productive, can never bring you true fulfillment. When you begin your day with a conscious connection to your Essence, and then take the time to check in with that same Essence periodically, you find a vastly different experience.
Many of us begin our day with a meditation of some kind, but then we head out into our everyday world and that peace and stillness is forgotten. Events take over and we find ourselves back on our treadmills like little mice, dutifully running around and around in ever-increasing circles of anxiety.
Become a Walking, Talking, Doing, Meditation
Meditation certainly can have a profound effect on our days, but the most effective meditation is one that continues in the background. A quick stop, a breath, a space from incessant thinking, grounds us in awareness. Eventually we can imagine being constantly aware of the background of Life, pulsating quietly away, moving forward through us into action and then back again to the background. What a huge difference from the day where the connection with Life disappears as we begin our daily work. Entering into the work environment can be like putting on a change of clothes. Now we are ‘this’ person, complete with the identification that goes along with the roles we are playing.
Funnily enough, my experience with the satellite internet service I talked about in my last post, is giving me a great opportunity to practice a living meditation, since I have to wait so long for each page to load (maybe 8-10 seconds as opposed to the instant loading I am used to, so it seems like forever), and in doing so I have the opportunity to sit in Presence for those moments instead of being on that crazy roller coaster of 20 things on the go at once and a mad rush to complete them all so I can get on to the next 20 with no breath in between to appreciate work done, assess next steps and enjoy!
Who Are You? The Roles You Play, Or … ?
So who are you in your work environment? Are you the designated title you wear? Do you pride yourself on your dependability? Even when your own needs are screaming out for attention and know that they don’t and won’t come first? Creativity? Outstanding skill-set? Great personality? Effective and efficient? None of those things are WHO YOU ARE. They are aspects of your personality, which is not ultimately who you are.
So then who ARE you? This is the question to keep asking yourself, peeling away the roles and identities we think we are until we arrive at the essence of who we really are.
Looking Through the Eyes of Life
Could you be the silent witness looking on? Full of peace and calm like the mighty ocean bottom while the noisy role-playing waves tumble around on the surface?
Why not take some time, just a moment here and a moment there, to focus on who you really are. Stop. Breathe. Become aware of your inner body energy. That’s all you have to do. And when you go back to the task at hand, it very often looks quite different from that moment earlier. New inspiration may flow. Or everything might look exactly the same, but you feel more of a sense of calm and that everything really is alright with the world.
The choice may be this simple. Live by your To Do list, or live from Presence. Which do you choose?