Mantra Monday: Be Present.

There's always so much going on and we try to keep pace with life and the rest of the world, sometimes it just takes over and we feel a bit like we're drowning in life - we want to do it all and have it all be perfect. Sometimes we think we have to fight and struggle to make things "right," to do everything. And more often that not, we feel we have to move mountains and try so hard to achieve happiness. That's really not the case.

We just have to be present.

I was recently trying to figure out what shoes I was going to wear to an event this past Friday. I spent an entire evening pulling out every single pair of shoes I own to find the perfect pair. Let me tell you, it was a severe case of Portside and the 44 pairs of shoes - the modern sequel to Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Although less than enthused about my choice, I settled on a pair. The very next day flipping through my email I happened on an ad for a shoe store. I clicked on one of the the links and lo and behold, I found the perfect shoes, right on the splash page (and they were on sale for 50% off!). I hadn't bought a pair of shoes since September. I figured this has to be serendipity. I didn't force it, I wasn't scouring the internet for shoes to wear, they were just there.

It's amazing how simple things like this can be. Maybe it's that we get so wrapped up in all the details we forget about the big picture.

When I sit for my meditation, if I think about having to sit still and quite my mind - it just won't happen, plain and simple as that. All I can think about is how I can't quiet my mind and then *all* the other things I'm not getting done while "just sitting." This weekend, one of the things I heard from our our Master teacher was about how if we dwell on that which we find painful or aggravating or overwhelming we become stagnant, are unable to grow, and lose vision. The Buddhist/Sanskrit term for this is Dukkha which encompasses our concepts of sorrow, stress, frustration, anxiety, the list could go on. So, in effect, it could be said that dukkha begets dukkha.

Her remedy was to acknowledge discomfort and use that energy to spin out of it. Or as the Artist said in conversation with me today, "Just acknowledge it for what it is, and maximize what you can from it."

Then I put on those sassy, sexy dancing shoes with their red heels and somehow, things become very simple, fun, and very honest.