The Real & The Crazy

5 October 2014

We always live in the present moment, but we are not always aware of it. 

Imagine you are on a summer cruise ship going from NYC to London. Imagine that around half way into your trip, while you're sleeping, you suddenly feel the ship turning and moving in an unusual way. You may feel a little trepidation but you decide to go back to sleep. 

Ten minutes after you went to sleep you hear some loud noises that wake you up. Your hear things falling from the cabinets and bed side tables hitting the floor. Now the ship is moving side to side more aggressively. You jump out of the bed and open your room's door that leads to the hallway. When you do, you see people running and screaming. You see panic and you wonder what's going on? You ponder what you should do.

You then get carried away in the franticness of the moment, running with everyone towards the doors that lead to the outside decks. While you are rushing to get out you see some people very afraid, others crying and suffering while others are just going just crazy. Seeing all of this you worry even more. You try to focus on reaching the doors, forgetting everyone and everything around you. 

After a few minutes of being pushed and pushing people, you make your way to the outside deck's doors and you get out. As soon as you do, you scream, help! You try to run towards...you don't know what...but you feel that you need to run to be safe. 

You see in the distance a life boat and you run like crazy towards it. As you're running you look around and you see a strange view: A sunny day with nice weather and people enjoying their vacation. Life as usual. No one is screaming, no one is panicking, no one is competing to get to the life boats. What's going on? You ask yourself. 

Hesitantly you slow your running and start walking. You look even more closely at your surroundings and you see that everyone is going about their lives.  

Am I crazy? You say to yourself. Wasn't the boat turning from side to side? Weren't people panicking inside the ship? 

You calm down and realize that you were mistaken and that all is ok. You may feel weird and wonder if you were in a dream waking up to see a different reality than the one you were dreaming. 

Lets now come back to the present moment and imagine that  as you are reading this article someone calls you to give you some horrible news. It could be that you are fired from a job you  feel you need. It could be that a love one just had a terrible accident and they are waiting for you. It could be that you are told that your life partner is about to break up with you. Or you are told that if you don’t make it to the hospital in ten minutes both of your legs will need to be imputed. 

I know this may be dramatic and uncomfortable to feel, but please bare with me and try on one of these scenarios, better if it is the one that shakes you up the most.

Feel how it would feels to go through that scenario. Take a minute to notice how you feel? 

Now that you have tried it on: Do you feel fear? A little? A lot? Do you worry? How upset are you? If you don’t feel a little upset, you haven’t tried it on. 

Now compare these feelings to the feelings you felt when you were "inside" the ship believing you were in trouble. Are there any similarities? 

Do you worry in both? Do you feel intense fear?

Now, lets come back to this moment and to the bad bad news scenario. Feel the feelings of the scenario you chose and while you do take a look around you. 

Are the walls of the house or building you are in, falling?  Are people around you panicking? Most likely not. Most likely you see everyone going about their day as usual. You see your house or building still standing. No one is hurt and the Universe is still doing what it does.  

When you look around you, you may compare your emotional reactions to the state of the physical world. When you do, you may see that they are very different. 

You may have felt as if something really bad was going to happen but in reality nothing is happening to you in this moment. 

In the present you are ok. You still have your job or money. You still have your legs (if you had them in the beginning) and no one had an accident.

When we truly look at reality while we go through our intense emotional reactions, we are able to experience the sharp contrast of our emotional drama (delusional beliefs) with the ok-ness of the moment. In other words, most likely we are fine in the moment even if we believe we are not, because of our fear. 

When we choose to get out of our heads and out of our emotional drama to look at the world around us, we may experience something similar as when we got out into the deck of the ship to see a normal sunny day. It can be like stepping out of the dream of our delusional beliefs. 

Through the practice of comparing the physical reality to our emotional beliefs, we may  become aware of our inner craziness and delusions. 

When we are truly in the moment we can discover a new world that always existed but we couldn’t see because we were so caught up in our delusional emotional beliefs. We may discover a consistent Universe full of wonders and mysteries ready to be realized. 

There is only the present moment, anything else is our mind's projections of possible futures or pasts that are gone.

Life could be so much more fun and enjoyable when we stop worrying about what may come and when we stop dwelling in a non-existent past.

To choose to be present is to choose to be in the moment, and to choose to be in the moment is to choose to be in reality. And to be in reality is to live in the real. And to live in the real is to be open to all possibilities available to us. 

Which one do you prefer?

© Edgar Boone