Than What's Found Present

Than what's found present:

seeking to escape has been my greatest cause of suffering, making a sincere wish for things to be other than what's found present - any moment but this, and always something better imagined in some far off time. My true suffering happened in my mind. 

it's not that suffering is imagined, anguish is real in the moment it appears and for however long it stays. Pain is the message of the moment, a current event no matter when the initial strike occurred, the experience of hurt is always now - and yet I would find myself projecting to a time beyond the hold of a present moment filled with pain, a false comparison of what is now and moment not existing. That's suffering. It's an impossible wish to escape whatever is occurring right now, a coping plan to ease a bit of pain. It just isn't real. 

sometimes reality hurts, and I've spent a fair amount of time in search for different ways to ease this pain, a pathway of blissful bypassing, ignoring a certain sacred truth always hidden right before my eyes - life is full of every possibility, nothing denied nor excluded, and this fullness must contain all the things that might bring pain, cause me anguish, grief for what I've lost. I'm always found here, and this present moment is an allowing space. It can't be truly ignored. Life will continue in possibilities, things will happen beyond my wish or control, and sometimes, perhaps often, I will feel broken, grieving, left behind - I will be in pain and I will suffer. But I won't add to this with a wish of an imagined future, a time when suffering doesn't exist. 

what I have is what's found present, whatever that may be now, and I have no idea of what will come next - life will continue in it's offering, and I will continue to experience the fullness of its gifts. Sometimes I will be grateful, appreciative of beauty, content in the simplicity of just this given moment. And sometimes not. It's how it all seems to go sometimes. Yet there is present grace to this, a motion that is constant in surprise. That makes all the difference - allowing life in all its motion. 

~

Peace, Eric