Be Here Now

"Be Here Now".... so cliche, right?

Actually, it's the simplest and perhaps most precise mantra I've come across.

It's so easy to slip into striving with meditation. I clamp down. Try hard. Push myself. And what inevitably happens? I become frustrated, disgruntled, even angry.

I've been noticing these feelings arising the past few sits. This morning, I opened my eyes in the middle of a sit and said, "enough." What always helps when I get stuck like this?

Pema Chodron.

I opened her book and found just what I was looking for. A brief discussion on Lightening Up.

Lighten Up. Here's the slogan for it: "Always maintain a joyful mind." Funny, that's exactly what I was missing. A joyful mind. How easy it is to forget that there is this well of love and gentleness, a really beautiful happiness right here. Right where I am sitting. It's right in me, and I'm totally overlooking it.

So I transformed this slogan a little to give myself exactly what I needed. "Just be with your self." There's something about telling myself this that encourages me to let it go, and open to the feeling of what it is to be alive -- to be me. I'm not thinking about good qualities about myself, traits, characteristics... there are no concepts here. It's just a sense of beingness that, when I turn my attention to, I delight in. It is warm and real and full of bliss. It has an innate ability to focus, clear, and calm the mind. It's incredibly powerful.

So, Just Be Here Now. With a joyful mind. Just be with your self.