The Gold in the Moment

I bought a new computer today. A super duper slim line version of my MacBook Pro.

It took nearly four hours and a phone call to the nice Apple support people - somewhere in Greece -  to transfer all my data.  Ninety nine percent of my data is my photo library.  I find the whole technology  thing - understanding it and using it - stressful and exhausting. 

 Having a new computer feels like learning a new life.  I know I need to but I want to hang on to the old familiar one which doesn't work properly but at least it's familiar.

A friend sent me this from the Tibetan Buddhist nun and teacher, Pema Chodron  "When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times" which I find comforting and inspiring. 

It keeps bringing me back to the gold in the moment, staying in the distress and the pain....not thinking there is anywhere else to be anything else to do....except of course I forget to do it....till the moment has passed.  Which is the moment to forgive myself.

Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.

Life is a good teacher and a good friend. Things are always in transition, if we could only realize it. Nothing ever sums itself up in the way that we like to dream about. The off-center, in-between state is an ideal situation, a situation in which we don’t get caught and we can open our hearts and minds beyond limit. It’s a very tender, nonaggressive, open-ended state of affairs.

To stay with that shakiness — to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge — that is the path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic — this is the spiritual path. Getting the knack of catching ourselves, of gently and compassionately catching ourselves, is the path of the warrior. We catch ourselves one zillion times as once again, whether we like it or not, we harden into resentment, bitterness, righteous indignation — harden in any way, even into a sense of relief, a sense of inspiration.

This very moment is the perfect teacher, and it’s always with us.

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We can be with what’s happening and not dissociate. Awakeness is found in our pleasure and our pain, our confusion and our wisdom, available in each moment of our weird, unfathomable, ordinary everyday lives.