Entering the moment with determined intent, I feel like I'm facing a torrential wind storm of thoughts and ideas, each trying to pull or suck my attention away.  Some fly by unimportantly; some seduce me so well I temporarily forget what I am trying to do.  I've no doubt the moment is still and peaceful, but the comfort and strength I know must be there is hard to experience.  It's like a hurricane in Heaven.

I wasn't expecting this to be easy; neither did I expect it to be so dramatic, that I would meet with such resistance.  Thoughts rush toward me through the gap between my intended position of being totally present and the stillness and freedom from fear that reside here in the moment.  I have often heard of the veil that lies between our experience of illusions and reality, between us and God.  That image sounds restful and delicate.  My experience of this phenomenon is anything but that.  The illusions flood over me. 

Breathing becomes an all-important anchor, returning my mind again and again to my purpose.  The thoughts seem to attack me and I keep deluding myself that I need to defend myself against them.

Until I remember that the goal has nothing to do with defenses and everything to do with overlooking the insanity, I try tricks like moving the thoughts off to one side or another or seeing them and releasing them. 

Paying any attention to them at all is giving them the power to tell me what is going on instead of discovering it myself.  The present moment has a message.  It is constant, not a series of lessons.  It waits for me to stop fighting myself and relax.

Herein lays the answer to this rather overwhelming dilemma.  To relax is really to surrender, to accept that these attack thoughts are going to do their worst and to accept that they are not the Truth, to remember that Truth exists and they are nothing but a strategy I long ago devised to keep the truth from my mind.  Why I did this, why we do this, is a mystery to look into at another time.  Accepting that it is being done is enough to teach me move on to another way of knowing who I am. 

Ultimately, the lesson is to accept that Truth exists and that illusions do not.  This seems simple enough, and it is.  However putting this into practice is a formidable challenge.  The solution lies in accepting that solution already Is, that problems are, without exception, self-made.  They all serve the sole purpose of distracting me from learning what is really here now.  Problems that seem to be in the physical world are no different in purpose than those that play chicken with me in my mind. 

Problems may come in terrible forms or seductive forms, each vying for my attention.  Every time I give them my attention I am again lost to what is really here.  Not only do these "problems that need solutions" work to distract me, they also seem to arrive complete with my invested interpretations.  They are con thoughts.  They con me into believing in them by exploiting my prejudices and beliefs.

(Yes, I understand the irony of writing and thinking about this phenomenon at all, it's just anther distraction, isn't it?  But while I am still with you and with these ideas of myself, I shall push on.)

So…I'll let that inner war drift away for now while I speak to the outer war.

It has been highly illuminating to practice present awareness with people.  I don't know them presently like I thought I did before.  This is a lot freaky.  My experience isn't as directed by my interpretations of past experiences.  In this sense it is like meeting people I may have know for a lifetime for the first time.  I get to see where they may really be right now, not just where I thought they along some iddentity track in time.  There is a sense of innocence that I experience in others and in myself that is rather refreshing.

That's all for now my beloved handful of readers.

May today hold you in its eternity.