Being here (1)…. Everyday moments of pure choice

Being here (1)…. Everyday moments of pure choice
Torrey Orton
April 30, 2010


As so often, out of sleep came a new theme – being here. This is not new in world history or local practice, but it is new for me to notice moments of everyday life that may be what the proponents of presence are referring to. Here's the first.

 

To wake or not…

These days I sleep with increasing lightness, a movement encouraged by my growing awareness that sleep's end is coming each new day. I often wake 30-40 minutes ahead of the alarm, which itself is inconstant, having different settings from day to day. My therapist would tell me therein lies my own inconstancy of sleep and be right but irrelevant to my emerging points now.


Two points
These points are: one, should I rise, or not, so much in advance of the alarm? And worse, two, should I rise at the moment of the alarm's bzzz, bzzz if I have slept up to the alarm's sounding? These two moments have the same challenge under different conditions. The first has more time than the second. Its space for thinking is bigger and so, strangely, more confusing. I can consider more options. The more space the more attraction for awareness to fill it, to populate it. I often do not seem to have a choice not to populate it.


Once the populating begins - often about subjects like this post - thoughts arise out of the upper depths of consciousness. These usually are structured thinkings about currently occurring work issues. And more strange, the material that populates it is often a comfortable fit with my overall low level of general arousal – I can contemplate a very precise thing for some minutes; an argument (an account) about it flows naturally. They follow their own path to an appropriate, usually transferable, conclusion. I make notes about them for use later. In the process I have decided for less sleep and more awake for the day.


An everyday moment of pure choice?
The second condition's time is 5 to 8 seconds I think. The boundaries are the distance between the bzzz, bzzz initiated conscious awakeness and turning the alarm off. This opens the door on a very slight possibility- that I will not get up just then – in which exists for some seconds a suspended state, a present but not engaged state that may be being here. I have to be quick or else I'll sink into blogthought diversions.


My day's rhythm is set in this moment since the underlying question is 'how pressing is my day?' arising in the dome of my awareness of the total substance of it – a global forecast of stressors without distinctions among them. I imagine this dome as a mini-me version of a lava dome (see Mt St Helens, USA) in an active volcano.


A pressing day…
This moment is a critical one for my taking control of the new day, or more likely for my being taken control of by it!! With a moment's being here comes the position, space or location in which to interrupt the naturally occurring flow of my whole system. At high stress times this matters, since automatic stress response habits engage to reduce potential stress before it is felt consciously…and so blocking me from certain realities altogether.


My first try seldom reaches the intended target
In the reflection created by the above excursion, I am aware that even trying to capture such a moment of apparent being here is a fraught enterprise. The word formation and deployment processes drive the experience out of range…making it impossible to capture the thing. Maybe I will get better at this with practice?? We'll see I hope. Getting better at it would mean my being able to use clearly, for example, 'position', 'location' or 'space' to characterise a "here".