To Taste All of Life

Life happens, and we respond. The question is whether we are responding to a set of circumstances in our past, or the circumstances of here and now. The habitual response systems we have set up to navigate certain situations in life often spread to all situations in our lives. It comes to a point where there is no longer any discernment between real threats and perceived threats, that is, everything gets jumbled into one lump , and fear, anger, resentment or another negative response program takes the florr as the 'only' way to deal with it.

Consciousness is the awareness of where the response is coming from. Are we coming from a place of fear? Are we coming from a place of experiential memories? Are we coming from a place of preconceptions? Are we coming from a place of judgment?

Awareness determines what is happening now through the process of perception, a single unified awareness derived from sensory processes, while stimuli is present - that means the news feed of information from what you are experiencing right here and now is absolultely current, every cell in your body is present and accounted for, every sense is assimilating the stimulus of the moment.

And this process excludes any semblance of thoughts, memories and judgments. That means that you are not recalling experiences of the past, you are not remembering assumptions you have made based ..xperiences, and that your expectation of the moment is not superceding what is actually happening.

Because this is the problem. This is what is happening so very often that we think it's real; we think we are experiencing life, but we are all caught up in the memory of an emotional/mental response to something we experienced some other place, somewhere, some other time....just not now.

Self-empowerment is the process of bringing everything to a level of consciousness so that you are experiencing the Here and Now, here and now.

All over life there are these examples - they are the heroes that inspire you, the voices that make your spine tingle, they are the person you saw break out of a rut and do what he wanted to do, they are the hard luck turned totally successful stories, they are the passion you see when someone is embracing life...these are what we yearn for because they are the experience of life as it it, without the coloring and shading of experience past.

An yet it's not something like a light switch that you just turn on either. It is an evolution of consciousness. You become more and more aware in each moment until you learn to differentiate between what is happening and what you thoughts are telling you is happening.

But what a gift, when that lightbulb goes off and you recognize the moment, and how very different it looks than what you thought; what an incredible gift when you can embrace the moment in its entirety. Life happens and you taste it all!

Blessings.
- Darshan

© 2008 Darshan F Jessop