I’m just going to do this today. Begin and begin again.  Isn’t this what we do each day, each moment, without even realizing we have reached a milestone of the earthly structure of time.  One moment passed and we begin again.  Another passed and we begin again.  There is a smoothness to life where we do not feel these new beginnings, though they are there and provide very real potential.

There is a choice we make every nanosecond of our lives. We can choose to start each day, each moment as a springboard to great love and great things by our own definition. We choose, we spring and we jump with expectation that the Kersplash will feel good and fun.  Sometimes is doesn’t, sometimes it isn’t.

In every moment we have a choice to feel good or to feel a complete belly flop.  How distraught we become when we cannot stand up and meet our big expectations that all will feel good.  In these moments, we often think and feel disappointment.  We rethink, analyze, shift and decide that the belly flop was a fluke. Go back and change everything leading up to the belly flop.  Is that taking each moment a new?  Is that beginning again? Or is that rewinding and repeating to get it right, to meet our expectations?  Rewind and try again.

Beginning again suggests we keep moving forward harnessing what we want in our world rather than attempting to change how it has been.  It is one springboard after another.  It reminds me of when I was a child. All of us, the group at the city pool standing in line to jump off the diving board over and over again. Stand in line, step up to the board, walk or run to the end and jump!  We were trying to reproduce a feeling. The exhilaration of flying…air bound, perhaps remembering to tuck in our legs so the splash could be as big as it could possibly be.  It wasn’t the mechanics we were trying to reproduce, it was the feeling, over and over all day long at the pool.

In the art of meditation it is taught to begin each day, each time you sit, as a beginner. The teaching says don’t bring what you think you know and feel from the past, bring where you are right now today.  Show up and be there.

We stumble on expectations and mostly we set them quite high.  One day the feeling of gratitude comes so easily.  The next, it feels like thick oil oozing from the earth.  Some days, there is no feeling at all. Some days there is a want to feel gratitude. Some days there is pure resistance to this feeling.  What if we stood in the moment and found the feeling of whatever we were feeling…nothing, resistance, ease? What if we sat in that moment and just felt what we felt without expectation and judgment?  What if we sat…… just being…..moment after moment after moment watching, feeling, and then in the next moment the same watching and feeling? What if we just sat without attempts to change anything?

My experience has been that what follows is an experience completely unrelated to our expectations, completely unrelated to the whys and wherefores of what we want or expect. The ultimate result is accepting what is without attachment, all the while watching the impermanence.

As human beings, whether we realize it or not, the sensations our world provides us with elicits feelings and thoughts. This in turn is what we pulsate out from our being.  This is where our power lies.  This is where we begin to understand our existence as magical.  It is where we find empowerment to create….a blog…..a piece of art…..a new career….a song…..a poem…..a day…..a moment….. where everything falls into place.  It could be a night of deep and restorative sleep. It could be a healthy body and spirit.  The creation is not occurring because we are trying to change something, it is occurring because we know how to shift into the presence of each moment and finding gratitude for all sensations and experiences.  It occurs because we are showing up and being aware in the present moment.

We are not attempting to undo the past. We are focusing on creating the present with precision and full of awareness of how our thoughts and feelings are swirling about within us.

This is the practice of mindfulness.  This is the practice of awareness. This is the practice of life.