Already Here

This activity I am in now, why does it feel effortless? Because I am already in it. There is nothing to do to get here and the “getting” somewhere is what causes me emotional pain and pressure. It feels arduous, complicated, effortful, like something beyond my ability or capacity that I don’t know how to make happen. That is true though. I don’t know how to do something of the future because I haven’t done it yet. That makes sense. I believe some types of anxiety and worry come from not knowing how to do something we are not yet supposed to know how to do. Why do we assume we should know how if we don’t yet, or may never? This is a very anxious thought.

What isn’t anxious is seeing how easy it is to arrive somewhere we already are; there is nothing to do. There is nothing easier than having nothing to do about something because it has already been done. Being here now is a phenomenon that comes for free and we really like getting things for free. In fact, much of our culture of happiness is the pursuit of acquiring things for free (or at least as cheaply as possible)! Being here in this activity/action means the work of getting to this future place (of the past) has already been done. Feel the liberation in not having to get anywhere ever again.

We were here the whole time but just didn’t realize it. Now we can understand that for the rest of our life we will already be where we need to go. For me, the freedom is not so much in the being here, but in the absence of effort I believed I needed to make the arrival occur. We associate this effort with all our hopes, dreams, desires and goals: getting to some place of achievement, act of productivity, product, result, in other words, the future. Identify for yourself the sensation of mental effort wrapped around your belief of the need to get to a place or an action that you hope will occur down the pike. Physically study the pressure and pain so you know what I’m referring to. Now experience its absence. This would be analogous to having a project you were working on for a whole year and every morning when you awoke you were immediately reminded of this thing looming over you. Then, one morning upon awaking, your mind habitually reverting to the familiar memory, you were suddenly struck with the recollection that the project had been completed the previous day. You were done, free of all responsibility toward this assignment forever! This is the release I am talking about except in our case the assignment is our life. Any time of day, you can pretend you have just woken up and realized that grueling undertaking hovering over you has already been accomplished.

Though I appreciate the goal of mentally being here (as we are, of course, always physically here, whether conscious of it or not), what I personally get more satisfaction and relief from is the absence of a need to do something. That is when I feel most free. It is exhilarating to achieve this state through the recognition that my already arrival to this moment (and it will always be this moment) means I no longer have the need to get here. It is dreadful to need something I don’t have and don’t even know I will ever attain. Alternatively, the acknowledgment that I am here now signifies the absence of having to get here because Earth already did the necessary work in its rotations (and will continue to do so). I will stay here forever as my stressful climb has reached its destination.