Beauty in Each Moment

For the past two weeks I’ve been trying to slow things down. If you looked at my life right now that would be hard to believe because there is a lot of activity, but internally I have been reminding myself to take the time to practice stillness.

I started the year off with a lot of excitement. I was going to start a new business with a new website and youtube channel, I decided to make spiritual practice more of a priority and had signed up for a raise your vibration challenge—I was ready to go. At the end of the first week, I was exhausted.

All the inspiration felt like it had burned out and I was fighting myself to keep up with the challenge—trying to prove that I could do it.

“Why are you doing that?” the voices asked me.

“I want to be good enough, I need to keep my commitments, and pursue these practices in a more structured way so that I can become who I know I am.”

“Look at what you are saying.”

I stopped and thought.

“I don’t have to become who I am. I am who I am.”

“You don’t have to prove anything” they told me, “You know what you want to do and you are moving towards it, there isn’t a rush. You are going so fast now but look at what you are missing out on in your hurry to become whoever it is you think that you aren’t.”

I thought about it more.

“But I want to have a life that is more free.”

“You are free, but you are missing out on the life you have right now.”

They were right. I had been swept up in a pattern that is typical for me—one where I get so excited to reach a new destination that I forget to live in the moment that I am currently in.

I was trying so hard to be ‘spiritual’ that I forgot that the reason for all of this was to experience life as it unfolds.

So I slowed down. I didn’t meet all of my personal goals and I stopped pursuing the challenge. The morning I had that conversation I laid in bed and then when I felt like it I got up and walked my dog. The sky was bright blue, the grass was saturated with color. There was a pulse running through me that ran through all of the world around me.

I came inside and made coffee, washed some dishes, spent time with my girlfriend. It was beautiful.

What am I running away from, I thought, and why?

There will be a time when life will look different than it does right now. I know that because that is the direction I am moving in. When that time comes I can be happy and excited to explore that different looking life, but right now I am here and here life is also beautiful and happy.

That’s the true secret to everything. It’s much easier to say than to practice though. Life takes place right now—there is beauty in this moment, there is joy right here. Sometimes it is nice to run after dreams and work towards goals, but it can be easy to get swept away in the movement and forget to stay still and enjoy what is unfolding right this second.

Beauty, love, hope, joy—they all exist here and now. We don’t always feel them, sometimes they get crowded out by other thoughts, feelings, emotions, and experience, but they are always present.

So this is just a reminder to step back and enjoy what is here now, to appreciate the beauty that is around you in this moment. The spark of divinity exists in all things great and small, it is present in this breath and that task. It is here to be experienced and it is truly beautiful.

Don’t overlook the joy in being alive right here and right now. This life is beautiful.

Thank you for reading. Wishing you an amazing week.