The Present of Life

Last weekend at Shalom Mountain, I was on a high Saturday night. I was really loving being among all these enlightened, intelligent people who were aware of themselves, could own their stuff, could really hear each other, and who were loving and open. I felt so lucky to be there and to be absorbing this energy.

But Sunday morning, for unknown reasons, my mood shifted. As we sat in the closing circle, I listened to the overwhelming gratitude people had for the weekend and for Shalom, and how there was no other place like Shalom - and I sat grumpy, saying to myself, "What on earth are they talking about? Did I miss something? Geesh, what's so wonderful about it? It's just another retreat center like all the others. Why are you all making such a big deal about it?"

The contrast in my moods couldn't have been greater. But it was not only my mood that had shifted, but the beliefs I was entertaining. And I caught myself red-handed - I remembered that I had felt another way just last night, and today I was building walls to separate myself emotionally before our parting.

I've had to deal with mood swings much of my life, and lately I learned a new way of handling them. When I find myself with two contradicting realities, I can usually discover which one is the real one by this rule: The voice that never changes, that repeats itself over and over, that never has anything new to say, is a dead voice. It doesn't learn, or take in new information, or alter its opinion. But the voice that shifts, and learns, and grows, and changes - that voice is alive and real, and interacting with the real world, ever learning, ever growing.

The voice in my head Sunday morning had been there a million times before, and was always the same - cynical, separating, judgmental. It had nothing new to say. The voice Saturday night was amazed by what I had seen, and saw anew a bit of what I wanted my path and future to be. It was alive and growing and present.

I believe that our lives consist of the summation of all the moments we are present. All of the moments we are not in the present, we are either rehearsing the past, or rehearsing the future. In other words, they are just reruns - we've thought them before, and repeating them adds nothing to our lives. And I wonder, how much have I actually lived in my life? Ten years? Five? And how can I start to live more of my life each day that is left to me, filling it with new awareness?