Hello and welcome to the daily insight.
It's nice to have you.
My name is Charles Freely and I'm a psychotherapist as well as a long time meditator.
In this practice,
I'd like to offer you a few visuals that might be helpful in your daily efforts to live a good life and in particular to enjoy the present moment as fully as you can.
And you can settle yourself in here.
If you'd like to close your eyes,
You can do so now.
But eyes open is also fine if you're on the move or driving.
Just whatever might feel unsettled or restless in your experience right now.
And see if your body knows how to just rest a bit more deeply into this moment.
Nothing else to do right now,
But just to be alive and to be curious about what that's like.
And I'd like to begin with a quote from Soren Kierkegaard that illustrates the whole message for today.
Here's the quote.
Life is not a problem to be solved,
But a reality to be experienced.
And you might gauge right now,
Is there any part of you that is treating this moment or approaching it as if it's a problem that you need to solve to figure out?
And maybe you can switch into a mode of just experiencing the reality of what's happening only right now.
And so here's a question for you.
When do the most beautiful moments in life occur?
Are they things that you plan for?
Things that you force into existence?
Things that you work toward and finally achieve once and for all if you only worry about them enough?
My guess is that none of these are true for you,
But that you might still find yourself using strategies like these in order to get happiness.
To get contentment,
Satisfaction,
Relief,
Fulfillment,
Connection,
Or whatever you might call that ultimate goal,
That thing that we're all grasping for.
As we grow up in life,
We learn that in order to get the things we want,
We have to grasp for them.
Like grasping for a glass of water to satisfy your thirst.
But this thing,
This ultimate thing that we're all after,
Is so elusive.
And it seems that the more we try to grab it and hold onto it,
The more it actually slips right through our fingers.
It's a frustrating paradox.
And I think it leads to a lot of the pain that we experience.
Whether it be anxiety,
Sadness,
Anger,
Or just general dissatisfaction.
The feeling that something's missing at our core.
And so what do we do?
Here's my take on how we can actually quote unquote get that thing.
So here's where the visual comes in.
If you would now,
Take one of your hands and make it into a really tight fist.
You could also just do this in your mind if you like.
And now slowly open up the fist into a completely open hand.
And spread your fingers out as wide as you can.
You might close up into a fist and then spread back out into an open hand.
And now tell me which one of these positions is able to receive anything.
The closed fist or the open hand?
And you might have guessed it,
The hand needs to first be open in order to be able to receive.
There's a line that goes,
Yesterday is history,
Tomorrow is a mystery,
And today is a gift.
That's why it's called the present.
And that's the way that I see the present moment.
That it really is a gift that is always available and it's always right in front of us.
It's right in front of you right now,
It's right in front of me right now.
If we would only open our hand up for long enough to receive it and accept it.
And I think it's the same way for all of those underlying things that we're on a deep level trying to get.
Like connection and fulfillment.
These things that if we could only open our hand up for long enough then we would be able to receive them.
Now I understand our addiction to the closed fist.
Efforts that we make to try to exert control and to try to get the things that we want.
It provides some feeling of security,
Some sense of certainty,
Even if it's of the totally dissatisfied and frustrated variety.
While with an open hand there's uncertainty,
There's vulnerability,
There's full possibility of this unique moment.
You don't really know what it's going to be like.
In the next five seconds you don't really know what this moment,
If you're totally open to it,
Is going to be like.
So it can feel a little scary.
But that's where the most beautiful moments in life occur.
That you have to have your hand open for long enough to receive them.
So it's my hope that you can kind of have an intuitive sense of at any moment whether you are being the closed fist or the open hand in whatever it is that you're doing.
Are you trying to exert control,
Gain some certainty,
Or are you open to the complete possibility of what's happening right now?
And showing who you really are and taking the risk to do that.
And I hope you find that visual helpful.
And I wish you well.
Thanks for joining me.
