Is It Ever Time to Despair?
It is late May and my husband and I have been looking for jobs since August of last year. Some would say it is definitely time to be getting frantic and filled with despair. Some may look at our situation and wonder how we are managing to keep ourselves sane. I would have asked myself this too if I hadn’t figured out how to get some peace.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been studying the work of Eckhart Tolle and I’ve gotten the hang of observing when the ego is trying to create fear to make itself stronger. If life is only in this moment, and this moment is the only one there is, then I’m doing just fine and so is my husband. We have enough to eat, a roof over our heads, friends, a loving family, and good health. Yes, we have bills, but at the moment, they’re all paid. We are managing just fine despite the dramatic reduction in our household income. And whatever comes, we will stay focused in the present and deal with it as it arrives.
What else can any of us ever really do? Sure we can worry ourselves to death and miss the joy we could be experiencing in this moment. And sometimes we do that before we catch ourselves and realize we are playing the puppet for the ego by projecting our fears into the future and not living in this present moment.
I have found it so convenient and helpful to simply remind myself that it is ego’s need to strengthen itself that manufactures all the fear thoughts we can get lost in. It isn’t necessary to resist the ego, just to recognize it. Becoming aware of the ego’s game is all it takes to collapse the whole gig. POOF!
We once had a little dog who wasn’t the brightest thing…but she was very sweet. She was terrified of thunderstorms. She always sensed the storm before it arrived and we’d find her howling at the back door when one approached. But when we’d let her in the door, she’d often run right out the front door if she had a chance–she was so frightened by the coming weather that she ran right back out into the storm she feared so much.
I think we do the same thing when we lose focus of the present moment. We go right back into the storm of fears we project into the future instead of staying in the Now. And when we focus on the fear, we fall immediately out of alignment with source, which pinches off the peace and prosperity that is our birthright, which can compound the issues we are currently dealing with and which we fear in the future.
It is so easy to forget this when the storms of change move through our lives. But in the stillness of this moment, there is shelter from the storm of fear our ego showers us with. We can always handle this moment as long as we don’t overwhelm ourselves with our fears of moments to come.
