“Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life – well, valuable, but small – and sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven’t been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn’t it be the other way around? I don’t really want an answer. I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void. So good night, dear void.”
—NORA EPHRON
YOU’VE GOT MAIL

I like my life. As I typed that, my life flashed before my eyes but not in the way one might think. My future flashed before me. And it was brilliant. I’ve been so present lately that the past is no longer my natural perspective. That…is…pretty exciting; I had no idea that this is how I feel.

I am content with the knowing and the not knowing; certain that I will reach my goals without attachment to how it will happen. It feels weird when things are so relaxed for a day on the couch. Nowhere to be. Nothing to schedule. I mean, I could be doing a thousand and one things today. Clean laundry, delete emails, replenish groceries, practice yoga…

Today’s Prayer to Passage comes from ‘The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment’ by Eckart Tolle.

I pray, “Dear God, I couldn’t possibly feel more present. I’m so content that I’m not bored, not revved up for planning, just… relaxed. And for some reason I feel like that is bad and wrong. Is it because I’m American? A Gen X adult? I don’t get it. What’s the deal? Why, God, can’t I just be content and not have to justify it to anyone, especially myself? All my love, Amen.”

Following my prayer, this passage was delivered:

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“The best indicator of your level of consciousness is how you deal with life’s challenges when they come. Through those challenges, an already unconscious person tends to become more deeply unconscious, and a conscious person more intensely conscious. You can use a challenge to awaken you, or you can allow it to pull you into even deeper sleep. The dream
of ordinary unconsciousness then turns into a nightmare.”
—ECKART TOLLE

I don’t have any major challenges to salute right now. I tend to react to challenges by doing. I make to-do lists and keep them on my kitchen counter until I’ve checked all of the boxes. Sometimes they hang out there for quite a few days or weeks. There was a time—pre-transformation, pre-growth, pre- all of the exhaustively hard work it took to finally cross over—when I slept amid my challenges. Today happens to be one of those days that I have off from work and would prefer to spend not checking boxes.

So, I am conscious. Conscious of guilt, of what I could be doing. Conscious of contentment, of regularity honored. Conscious of my own earnest consciousness. I’ll take it (she types while dark chocolate melts in her mouth and the scent of bleach wafts into the living room signaling a clean tub and a hot bath ready to be drawn). Not too awake, not too asleep, justly content.