Waiting
I found this piece from Gina especially helpful and I feel you will too.
WAITING
by Gina Lake www.radicalhappiness.com
The ego is always waiting for something—a relationship, news about something it wants, a vacation, a promotion, a meeting, a move, or some other anticipated change. There’s always something just around the corner that it is looking forward to or hoping to experience that will presumably make life better. This perpetual state of waiting leaves us with a sense that something is missing now. But aren’t some of the things you waited for in the past here right now, along with lots more? That doesn’t matter to the ego, which focuses on what isn’t here, not on what is here.
This is just what egos are programmed to do. They are programmed to be future-oriented, not present-oriented. The trouble with identifying with our egos is that this future-orientation doesn’t feel good. We imagine feeling good in the future when we get what we want, but the actual experience of waiting and wanting something other than what’s right here is a state of contraction. Just notice how waiting and wanting feel in your body. They make you feel tense and tight, dissatisfied and unhappy.
Along with a tenseness, waiting for something feels like an emptiness, a hole, that needs to be filled. This isn’t a very pleasant feeling either, so we often try to fill up this emptiness with food and other forms of pleasure. If we don’t feel good and we feel like something is missing, the ego’s solution is to try to feel good and make up for what’s missing. This leads to pleasure-seeking or escapist activities, and those ultimately lead to feeling worse. The hole can never be filled this way. The only thing that can satisfy is dropping out of the egoic mind and into essence, where the juiciness of the real moment can be experienced.
The trouble with the future is that it isn’t real. It doesn’t exist except as an idea. If we are putting our attention on the future, we are putting it on an unreal idea. And worse—we are giving our attention and energy to something that has no purpose, that doesn’t serve us in any way. You won’t convince the ego of this, however, which believes that thinking about the future has value in creating it, or at least in helping it cope with the present, neither of which is true.
Thinking about the future keeps us out of the present, where life is happening. We miss out on what life is showing us right now that may have great value for the future. Maybe an intuition or insight is arising that will inspire action in a profitable or fulfilling direction. If you are paying attention to your thoughts, you may miss the guidance and wisdom that are coming out of the moment from your true Self, from essence. The false self (the ego) has lots of advice and guidance to offer, but its advice is only informed by conditioning, which isn’t that helpful. What is true and wise can only come from your depths, from essence, not from the egoic mind, which merely pretends at knowing.
Once you begin to notice how the ego causes dissatisfaction and emptiness by creating a sense of waiting for something else to happen, you can be present to that sense of waiting, and in doing that, become free of the suffering caused by it. The sense of waiting for something better will always be happening because the ego produces this constantly. Just notice this and recognize it for what it is—the ego’s attempt at making you happy and coping with life. Don’t identify with it, that is, don’t believe that you will be happy when…You can be happy right now, and all it takes is seeing that happiness is not something in the future that is dependent on something happening.
Happiness is not dependent on anything. It is our natural state. When we are quiet, still, and receptive, happiness bubbles into our awareness. It was always there, but you have to notice it, and you won’t be able to if you are noticing your thoughts about the future instead. Turn your attention to what is happening now, and there will be no need for waiting for something different. Now is enough. There is nothing missing if you are really present to what is instead of to your thoughts. Your thoughts are the only thing that insists that the present moment isn’t enough. Turn away from those thoughts and voila! Nothing missing. Everything is just as it is meant to be—and that is the truth. Just rest in this realization.
All is well and unfolding exactly as it needs to.
This is the source of Peace.
Earthangel9250
Rene 5* Rating
This can set you free if you let it.