Chasing the Present Summary

Like most things I take on in a quest to improve my mental health, the Chasing the Present summit through Hay House was a mixed bag of things, sometimes a bit of a challenge to get through, sometimes uplifting, and sometimes my skeptical mind just took it all with a grain of salt. I’m happy I took the time to investigate it though because I did get a lot out of it and I think, overall, I will be able to look back on it as a tool that I’m glad I had. I will preface this summary by saying the lessons taught are largely, if not completely, Buddhist. Some of the main themes that ran through the series of videos were: Attachment causes suffering. Identifying with who you think you are in the material world is a false sense of self. In order to find your true self you need to go internal. Breath work, yoga and meditation are valuable tools to uncover the truth within, that you are infinite and not defined by the material world. When we try to numb or escape from our emotions they are more persistent. The only way to get through them with grace is to acknowledge them for what they are, without judgement, feel them, sit through them and they will eventually dissipate. Life is a series of waves up and down, if you get caught up in the extremes of the waves you will always feel like you are being tossed around and beat up; when you learn to stay neutral you will not be tossed around but you will ride the waves. I will try to summarize a lot of information without this getting too wordy. When we are young, we rely on our relationship with our parents for survival. When they feed us we feel nurtured and secure, but sometimes when we are young we can mistake innocent actions by our parents as traumatic- if a parent suddenly turns away from us or leaves the room- and these form a pattern of expected outcomes from behavior. We learn early on, the things that get us love/attention/nurturing and it forms our neural pathways. When we develop a little more, we also learn to stifle the behaviors that keep us from getting those things. For instance, if our parent gets annoyed when we are too happy/loud/active we can learn to hide those things about ourselves in order to maintain their approval/love/nurturing attention. That is a survival skill that works for us when we are young because our parents not rejecting us is a survival issue. We need to be fed and kept warm and dry, etc. When we grow up not having what we need from our parents or feeling not good enough or always afraid of rejection we try to use other things as a means to cope with a world where the ideals of society are often so high that none of us meet them. We turn to things to try and handle it on our own- drugs, sex, gambling, food, video games…and what it actually does is separate us from others (often for fear of being rejected if we speak from the heart or show our true self). These patterns repeat through life until you find a path to healing. When we believe that we ARE our emotions, when we attach our identity to them, we suffer because they are always changing, but there is a deep, infinite part of us inside that never changes no matter what happens to us. The soul, if you will, or your spirit or your true self, whatever term suits you best. This part of us is part of the divine, connected with the entire universe and is bigger than the mundane part of us that lives our daily lives getting caught up in emotions. One teacher compared it to a stream; most of the time the water flows smoothly, but sometimes a tree (emotion) gets stuck in the stream and the water can’t flow as well until we clear the tree from the stream. So, if we say “ I am depressed” we are putting that identity on ourselves, I am depression. When you learn to sit with what it is you say, “I have some bad feelings right now but I know it’s not permanent, this is just how it is right now. “ The difference is that, when you don’t fight it or try to escape or erase it, you begin to find some peace there. There is a great short poem by Nayyirah Waheed that is shared in the videos: “Once in a while, take off your life and rest.” That is the sentiment of the healing. Sit still and breathe. Focus on your breath going in and out. As it comes in, it brings energy all the way from the bottom of you up to your head. As you breathe out you are letting go of the parts of you that aren’t really you. ‘Receive and release’ I like to call it in my own mind. When you start to bring your focus to the parts of you that are not swept away by the emotions, you begin to feel more relaxed with having emotions, you begin to experience them without having to analyze them or trying to rid them from you, but just witness without judgement and the feelings become less powerful as you realize this moment will not last forever. This is the way we ‘take off our life’; let go of the parts of us that are reacting from past experience. ‘Be still and know. All there is is now.’ Journeying into the poison leads us to the nectar. Instead of feeling like a victim “This is happening TO me” think of life happening THROUGH you and you can want the stream flow without getting swept away in its story. One of the most beautiful things I heard was this quote, and it feels like a fitting place to leave off: “Your task is not to seek love, but to merely seek and find all of the obstacles you’ve built against it. “