Wishing Our Life Away

Someone remarked to me today: “It’s kind of a shame that we wish so much of our life away, we wish for the weekend, we wish for winter to be gone….we only get one life, yet we spend so much time wishing it away.”

Wise words, and they got me thinking about what that means in the various intertwined, yet seemingly separate aspects of our lives. If we reach Monday and spend our week peering over Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday to that all elusive Friday, then where is our consciousness? 

I don’t ask this in some huge external existential way, I ask from a very practical, present and tangible way. Where is our conscious attention? It is on this future place, far ahead of us. Yet, between Monday and Friday, there are hundreds of interactions, moments to laugh, moments to eat, moments to sleep and have sex and move, but are we there for those moments?

If not, then is it possible to make any momentum towards things we love in that time?

Chinese medicine speaks so eloquently about principles of balance. Giving great credence to living life in the middle: never too far into excitement or too far into nothing.

It is the principle of longevity and thus good living to frequently check in with what constitutes balance at the given moment, in the given situation. Included within this concept is the observation of now.

If we are locating ourselves outside of now, in some yet to be actualized time, pining for it, lusting after its elusive and amorphous hint of rest, we are placing our conscious attention into that space. 

Why does this matter? Well, from a Classical Chinese Medicine standpoint, our qi goes where our mind goes, where our thoughts go. If our Qi is elsewhere then what is within our organs, or our blood? What is directing digestion or sleep or muscle movement and repair?

How does all this really matter? Well, let's consider digestion. Studies show that eating while under stress lowers hydrochloric acid, thus impairing digestive enzymes, bile production and periostitis. In short, eating while stressed severely limits good digestion.

Placing our mind elsewhere is a form of stress because we are projecting our presence out of ourselves. I suppose if we were just elsewhere meditating about sitting on a sunny beach, the effect might be more minimal, but we aren’t elsewhere on a sunny beach, we are by in large elsewhere in an effort to escape what our present moment actually holds. 
If we do this once, or twice, no problem, but doing this week after week, month after month, our systems of food assimilation get tired, after all, for them, this experience is a lot like walking uphill through slime.

So, it is no wonder we are exhausted, frustrated, disillusioned, in despair, gaining weight, struggling to find our joy, finding it hard to have love in our lives and turning to empty pacification. We are so disconnected all of the time!

What would it be to fill ourselves up, to commit to this one moment, body, mind, and spirit?

What would it be to live fully expansive?

What would it be to challenge the paradigm that claims ownership of our inherent joy? 

What would it be to enact our power of choice about this and all moments?

We all have this chance, to bring the NOW powerfully into our all and live there, not just to visit, but to LIVE there.

This is what happens when we abandon just trying to change our mind and dive in deep to heal our bodies and connect the totality of us in one powerful conversation.  The disconnect dissipates and in its wake is rich, full, sticky, sweet life!

This is what the women I work with tell me they have found and it doesn’t have to be just them, it can, in fact, be you too.

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Blessings,

Dr. Julie

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