Do you have something in your life that feels like a ‘constant presence’?
This notion has come up a few times in conversation recently (usually in relation to something unwanted):
“It just feels like this constant presence…”
It's something that seems to be there, all the time – a black cloud that can't be escaped, sucking the joy out of every moment with its ‘constant presence’.
I'm writing this, because I reckon we all have something like this in our lives, we just don't tend to admit it. It could be:
- Our financial circumstances
- A relationship problem
- Our work situation – people, or the work itself
- Health, or illness, or a diagnosis we've been given (or are awaiting)
- An unpleasant, difficult or boring task we always put off
- The behaviour of someone close to us
- A decision we feel like we have to make…
I mean, I could go on here, because there's literally no limit to the things that minds can turn their attention to, in order to worry about them!
(Hell, there've been times in my life when even changing the damned water filter has felt like a ‘constant presence’!)
Literally everybody has got stuff going on—we're human, we live in the world of form!—so it stands to reason that each of us will have something that we're concerned about.
And while it can feel like a ‘constant presence’, it doesn't have to impinge on your enjoyment of life.
Is it constant, though?
Here's where an understanding of the principles behind how we experience life can really help.
In particular, two of the 🔑 Key Messages I share with people are pertinent to this conundrum, because:
- Your felt experience of life can only ever be happening Now – you literally get nothing else, in terms of the experience you have.
- We live in the feeling of a Thought-created perceptual reality – you don't get to experience situations themselves, you experience the thought-created image of that situation, generated from within your psychology.
So for something to be a ‘constant presence’ it would have to be showing up in every ‘Now’ moment that comes along.
But when you slow down to look, you'll see that while there are certainly moments in which the unwanted situation physically manifests—a text, a call, a meeting, an appointment, a conversation, some post, an email—there are vast swathes of life in between those, where the situation isn't happening.
It's not constant, at all.
🤷🏻
So why does it feel like a constant presence?
Quite simply, because we feel thought.
Any time the light of consciousness shines on thoughts about the situation, you're going to feel that, as if it were actually happening.
When it's not. Which is a very different proposition.
And as more and more thought about a situation is rewarded with attention, that slowly becomes your experience… and all the bits of ✨ LIFE ✨ in between go unnoticed, as the mind creates these insidious little rules that say you can't enjoy yourself until it's all sorted.
😩
A situation that feels like a ‘constant presence’—the “black cloud that can't be escaped”—is actually made of nothing more than thought.
Ethereal, capricious, tricksy, illusory thought.
🐒 💭
Double jeopardy
That's not all.
For every moment your attention is on old, stale, conditioned fears and insecurities, it's acting like static on the line of what you really need in these situations: wisdom, common sense, perspective, insight, novel solutions, all of which are there for the taking… if it weren't for our insecure thinking!!
🤦🏻
Yes, there's a situation to deal with. And yes, there will be future occurrences—physical manifestations—of that situation.
But when it comes to the handling of that situation, there's a huge difference between taking-action-in-the-moment-then-getting-on-with-your-life vs. endlessly-worrying-about-it.
Worry really is pointless.
It doesn't change anything (except your enjoyment of life) and it gets in the way of what you need.
🤨
So here's something for you to take away with you today:
When we slow down and deeply look at things, we see that the only real ‘constant presence’ in our lives, is presence itself: the noticing.
What are you noticing – life, or your thinking about it?
💟
Giles
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