As a good mother, Synergy quietly and unconditionally nurtures, protects, and challenges us with opportunities to learn and grow. She puts choices on the table in front of us when we are truly hungry, a roof over us when we are exposed, and paths in front of us when we are ready to explore.
It’s up to us to choose to partake and she will accept and love us whether we accept her gifts or not, whether we show gratitude or not, and whether we even recognize the great lengths she’s gone to orchestrating our potential satisfaction or not.
A mother gives to her children because she brought them into existence. Yet her ultimate joy comes from letting them find their own road into understanding her gifts and her love.
Sometimes those gifts appear to come on command but that is part of the learning process because breaking through the illusion of control and surrendering to her will is an important lesson to teach.
When a child is born, they have no social constructs programmed in their minds, and are creatures of pure feeling.
Physical discomfort. Emotional discomfort. Intellectual discomfort. Satisfaction. Like animals, they have simple needs and simple joys. Hunger. Pain. Insecurity. Comfort. Satisfaction.
Children live in the Moment.
Their only means of communication are cries and caregivers respond to those cues with feeding, burping, changing, cuddling, and playing. The child makes demands on their environment and the parent either successfully provides satisfaction or does not.
Parenting requires living in the Moment.
A parent rarely can feed, comfort or change a diaper in advance of the need because infants do not have the ability to delay gratification or bank it in anticipation of future need.
That is a learned response.
Grown ups will will eat when not hungry, sleep when not tired, exchange things that are not soiled, and take action to avoid future problems.
All of these behaviours take you out of the present and ignore what you truly need, what you truly desire, what is actually available for you at that Moment. You can only demand satisfaction for what is a sincere need but you also can only express the need, not command the solution.
A famished newborn suckles what rubs at their cheek. An exhausted infant falls asleep in any position. A bored baby finds entertainment in their own hands and feet.
Examining the urge to eat when not hungry, the habit of sleeping when not tired, and exchanging when not soiled can give clarity and yield greater satisfaction by saving those behaviours for Moments of true need, and allows you to identify what you have authentic need of in those Moments of substitution.
From a very young age we learn artificial timelines and routines which drown out the internal voice of our wise mind. Children move from being fed on demand to being fed on a convenient schedule. Their lives begin to revolve around the ticking clock and their needs accommodate the lifestyle rather than a lifestyle accommodating their needs.
This is how associations get made between basic needs and inappropriate satisfaction, when we stop living in the Moment and stop recognizing our needs, substituting something else in an attempt to feel satiated.
There is value and comfort in schedules and routines, especially when outside connections must be maintained. But inside our own homes and lives, living an On Demand life where needs are met as they arise rather than because lunch is served at noon allows a return to a more direct link between feeling a need and taking action to satisfy it.
We classify things. It’s in our core nature. We also judge things. It’s in our core nature.
Satisfying or unsatisfying.
Balanced or unbalanced.
Safe or unsafe.
Yes or no.
Classification allows us to quickly and easily respond to opportunities as they arise in our environment, and the recall of classification status can be of great benefit.
…the last time I drank tequila I bruised my head so I won’t drink it because I expect I might do it again…
…the last time I ate at this restaurant I loved it so I expect I will enjoy it again…
…the last time I met this person they hurt me so I expect they’ll do it again…
Where problems arise is the generalization of classification status to all individual examples of the class, or if the classification inhibits the experience in the Moment by placing expectations on it from the past. Even if the classified object has been consistent in its classification every moment in the past, if you are truly living in the present Moment then you must allow opportunity for a adjustment in classification. You can be ready for what you expect to happen, you can be prepared for consistency, but your actions every moment need to allow for change. Need to be open for growth and acceptance. Need to hold hope.
Expectations are only meant for preparation not perpetuity.
…the last time I drank tequila I bruised my head. I will observe my consumption this time and see if I still need protect myself…
…the last time I ate at this restaurant I loved it. I will observe my consumption and see if I continue to love it…
…the last time I met this person they hurt me. I will observe my interaction and see if I still need to protect myself…
Our classifications and judgements are about keeping us safe and getting our needs met. They are information used to predict the potential of a situation to hurt us, help us, or hinder us, and we rely on a script built on the pattern card for the classification we’ve assigned to our past experiences. Yet, if our boundaries are sound and our faith solid, we can throw away those recipes for survival and instead trust our instinct for success and our universe to provide for our needs.
Every Moment should be a blank page ready to be written rather than a worn script being re-read. Each interaction should be an exploration of options rather than a rote recipe; even if the ingredients are the same, you can have different results by changing up the mixture.
In the case of the WWF players, classifying a Scammy Sammy involves a judgement of the patterns and characteristics typical of the fraud-minded users. Recent start date. Low average game score. Low average word score. Interchangeable first and last names. The fact they challenge in the first place. And most tellingly, the speedy chat attempt. Based on these ingredients, the classification as Scammy Sammy makes sense and engaging appropriate defense mechanisms is understandable.
Except…those same mechanisms should be in place for all interactions no matter the classification! The rule of no expectations, only boundaries applies at all times. If you are consistent in your boundaries then you are safe no matter if you’re in the lion’s den or the games room. Everyone you meet should be treated with the same respect, courtesy, curiosity and interest while maintaining healthy boundaries. Even Scammy Sammys are human beings behind the script and feel the barbs of judgemental contempt if levelled at them.
Accept the information your classifications give you, hear the options your emotional and judgemental minds feed you, but don’t act upon either until the Moment of choice is upon you and then act from compassion not from fear, because very rarely are you in true danger if you live inside solid boundaries.
If someone hurt you in the past, but are not hurting you in the present, then enlightenment demands you treat them according to the present Moment. If someone previously fit one of your class groupings but is not demonstrating those traits today, mindfulness demands you give the benefit of the doubt while maintaining your healthy boundaries. If someone you have never met before seems to be falling into one of the classifications, observe the interaction but reserve your judgement and give them the benefit of the doubt while maintaining your healthy boundaries until a moment of choice arises. If your boundaries are working properly, people’s behavior will not catch you off guard since you have no expectations!
Live it like Lucy.
Lucy wakes up each morning with no recall of recent events in the Adam Sandler romantic comedy 50 First Dates. A brain injury destroyed the connection between her short term and long term memory. Her core personality remains intact but she cannot consciously add new experiences to her life history. Once she falls asleep, which is when healthy brains compile the day’s adventures, her slate gets wiped clean.
She truly lives in the Moment. Not as profoundly as poor Tom who has a ten second recall, but she cannot consciously remember the days after her accident, good or bad.
Enter Henry, a man who lives for variety and challenge so cannot commit to relationships. Normally a girl like Lucy would never keep him, and would never fall for his ploys because she would catch on after one day. The next time she saw him, he would be classified as unable to meet her needs thus unsafe to engage with.
Yet those needs were based on the woman she was the day before. Her classification is based on historical data rather than the current situation. Her judgement is flawed because the woman she is does not now need protection from the man he is. Yesterday she may have told him he had one day to win her trust and then she’d be done with him.
Except now Henry always has one day. He gets to know Lucy inside and out, one day at a time, and learns how to be everything she could ever want while not being judged for who he is. His insecurities, his passions, his core self are not vulnerable in this relationship because any mistakes he makes are erased and he gets to start fresh the very next day. She doesn’t remember what happened the day before and he chooses only to remember the good parts.
Both are truly living in the Moment and both loving it. Lucy has no expectations of Henry, while he has none of her, yet both maintain their personal boundaries.
Until Lucy starts leaving herself notes. Judging Henry’s satisfaction with the relationship based on her values and experiences. She stops living in the Moment and relies on her thoughts and feelings about the contents of her journal, ultimately breaking up with Henry. Her conscious attention to her classification of the relationship as unfair to Henry thus inconsistent with her core values ignored the sincere joy both she and Henry felt. She felt like a burden on him and her family and admitted herself into a residential facility. There she figured she’d forget about Henry.
She was wrong.
Although her thinking mind and her feeling brain could not recognize the person in front of her or put a name to his face, her wise mind knew that face and missed the bond between them which was deeper than the events of each moment.
When we truly let go of the past, or at least the emotions associated with it if not the information collected from it, then we can start each morning with a clean slate and let those around us be free of judgement and classification while still keeping ourselves balanced and satisfied.
With our eyes wide open and full of acceptance and curiosity, we see only what we need to see.
Because a Moment is rooted in our Wise mind, which is not grounded in the physical world, rarely does money have relevance. Money is a tool to be used in the quest for satisfaction, and it of course offers leverage when prying open puzzle segments in the escape room which is your life, but it does not meet your needs in and of itself.
Except the sensations of security, power and control.
Those are actually sources of imbalance because if you surrender to the moment you are living in total insecurity. You dwell in Schrodinger’s Box where all possibilities exist simultaneously until the Moment of choice comes where you have a chance to commit to one option. You relinquish control to the universe and allow its power to course through you as it will rather than attempting to bend it to your will or resist it.
Money is not something you need. It is a resource to be used at the right time. Were you to receive five million dollars right this instant in your bank account, it would require action on your part to convert that financial windfall from digital delight into satisfaction.
Think about it.
What would it translate into? And how long would it take to bring actual change in your level of satisfaction and contentment? Paying off your mortgage doesn’t change your home and the only time you really need that money is the day the bill is due. Otherwise, a need for money is a feeling, and feelings are not facts! So, paying off a mortgage only affects the Moment of payment, which is one or two days per month. If today is not that day, then thinking about your mortgage or rent means you are not living in the present.
Need a car? Is that what you would do with the funds?
Why?
If you need need to get to work, THAT is your need, not the car. Truly understanding what the problem is – getting to work – as compared to obstacles – lack of a car – will open your eyes to opportunities for meeting your need that get overlooked because you are only seeing obstacles. You focus on getting the money to buy the car and lose the opportunity to connect with your interesting neighbour who works on the same street you do and would love your company on the drive to work.
Visualize how you would spend every last dime of an unlimited bank account. And then examine the underlying need behind each purchase. Understand yourself better.
And realize that it is not lack of money preventing needs from being met. Everything you need will always be available to you in the Moment you truly require a specific resource.
Today, right this instant, what need is not being met? Our basic need for food and shelter is actually subservient to the need for psychological safety.
Emotional homelessness, the sensation where it is more comfortable to be without an address or a family or contacts, can happen even amongst those with copious funds in the bank. Freedom from the perceived injustice of social expectations can drive someone from the comforts of home into apparent privation but the safety of the mind overrides the safety of the body. An extreme example of living in the Moment, where feelings of imbalance turn a life upside down yet the person living it feels more stable in the uncertainty of the street than the certainty of a unsatisfying life
The universe gives us what we truly need but we tend to get wrapped up in or distracted by what our emotional and judgemental minds tell us we want.
We may feel like we want money and think that we need it but we know we don’t.
What matters right now in the escape room which is your life?
There are countless things to think about. Yesterday’s events. Tomorrow’s promise. Where you are. Where you’ve been. Where you’re going. Where society’s been. Where it’s going. All very important.
But are they relevant?
Do you need to consider these things right now, in this moment? Does the identity of the person who keeps stealing your lunch from your work fridge matter on Saturday afternoon? Will pondering the global economy make a difference in your spending habits today?
Filtering important thoughts from necessary ones protects and focuses your energy and grounds you in the present. Putting topics on the back burner is not dismissing them; in fact the most delicious scents emerge from simmering pots and you know they’re ready to be enjoyed when the smell gets so tantalizing you can’t resist opening them up.
We have all we need in front of us each day. But we are bombarded with stimulation from the larger world. Whether our street, our municipality, our region, our country or our planet, very few of us actually have an impact at any given moment. If we dedicate our time and energy on finding solutions in our very own limited present, ideas for the future will percolate through our wonderful mind all on their own.
When you accept everything – including the worrisome, the painful, the toxic – then you stop worrying, you stop feeling pain, and you stop acting toxic. Our world is what it is today. It was something else yesterday. It will be something different tomorrow. You can make a difference only by living in the Moment and taking action that is available right here, right now.
In taking action to meet our own needs we ensure we have the strength and stability to meet the needs of others. Place your own oxygen mask before assisting others with their survival lest you suffocate while saving them.
You can be an anchor thread which changes the global picture but only by whittling away distracting thoughts and irrelevant feelings to leave behind a clear perspective on what is possible in this Moment.
Being of service is a fundamental impetus in all of us. To be useful. To be necessary. To be part of something larger. To serve a purpose.
The smallest of acts serves a purpose but so often gets dismissed and ignored because of the apparent insignificance. Yet for want of a horseshoe nail the kingdom was lost. Finding the comfort of meaning in the minutiae lends courage on the path to larger acts of service. Taking pleasure in the daily routines of maintenance or rituals of support brings satisfaction to the most menial of tasks. Never more than in our present global situation has the importance of service been so clear.
Servitude is a mindset where the person being of service, or the one being served, feel entitled to the interaction in some way. Either the person receiving feels they are above doing the deed, that they deserve to be waited on, or the person providing the assistance feels in some way obliged to do so. Truly, they both may BE deserving and obliged but choosing to occupy the feeling of obligation or entitlement is to lose an opportunity for intimacy. Obligation and entitlement are states not conducive to making Moments, but every second of every day in any role in any place is an opportunity for a Moment. Serving is an incredibly fulfilling experience if you choose to embrace it as the powerful and necessary role it is.
Even if you perform the same act one thousand times each day, you are what determines if it is an act of service or an act of servitude. You can choose to find meaning and satisfaction in the sameness while watching for opportunities to get what you need, since Synergy makes sure you have available to you the resources you need when you need them.
Finding satisfaction in service brings pleasure to both sides of the equation and opens doors to opportunities for greater service. Sincere service floods both parties with gratitude for the service rendered and the opportunity to serve.
Have you felt it?
Have you experienced a Moment when someone made you truly feel blessed as they completed an act on your behalf, like it was their honour to be a part of your journey?
Or the reverse, feeling humbled as you gave support to someone whose authenticity and character made you feel you would do anything for them?
Be the horseshoe nail. Take pride in being of service knowing you may seem insignificant or invisible yet Synergy knows your worth. Every act we do is important and an opportunity to share a Moment with ourselves, with Synergy, or with others.
Mindfulness and faith propose that every moment is exactly what was meant to be and that you should surrender yourself to each moment and accept the reality of it. From that acceptance, peace will flow, satisfaction will arise, and joy will blanket you.
But if we follow that philosophy outwards from our limited perspective as an individual, we must also accept and embrace ALL circumstances as having purpose, as being necessary, as part of our requisite circumstances to grow as human beings or the human race.
Mindfulness and faith espouse not judging what is, simply acknowledging what is and reflecting on how that reality influences your satisfaction with the moment and how in turn this moment can be influenced by you.
So, to truly and completely embrace this concept, we must embrace and accept what is present in the world. Without judgement or fear or thought or emotion. And act only upon what we can do in this instant, in this immediate environment, with the tools present and available to us. To do anything else is to leave the moment.
An example is to see the conditions of 2020 without emotional trauma. Yes, the conditions have victimized many and are not peaceful, pleasant nor desirable. But feeling victimized, traumatized, or devastated does not change the circumstances of this moment. Judging any of the political, social, environmental or biological circumstances of 2020 does not make this moment better.
Today’s world is the outcome of cumulative events. Although the impacts of these events are profound and far reaching, which can be overwhelming to consider, the most important focus is here and now. The causes of our situation are irrelevant in this moment, but awareness of the imbalances that led here may be important for you.
Or not.
You are exactly where you need to be. Regardless of how you got here or where you are, you also have everything you need to get where you want to be.
Look around you. What do you need TODAY? What is essential to your survival in this moment and what action can you take today to obtain it. Not future actions or future goals. Here and now is all that counts and is perfect to take you into your next moment.
Our decisions and the impact of the decisions of others creates our situation. But Synergy puts in front of us the tools to change our situation and opportunities to do so if we are patient, present, and persistent.
She’ll be with you in a Moment if you quietly wait, watch and believe.
Time is an artificial construct of the material world, a symptom of the short circuit in our brain that prevents us from living in the moment. We don’t need to measure the past or future if fully immersed in the present!
Time is a source of great anxiety and stress. Do I have time for this? Don’t give him the time. I had the time of my life. But when you have a Moment, time melts into nothing. Time flies when you’re having fun. And people who embrace living in the moment accomplish more in the exact same 24 hours everyone else lives. Time is what you make it.
As are timelines. To truly live in the Moment requires trust that all will be well. That deadlines and due dates, even though arbitrary material constructs, will be met not through thinking about them but through forgetting about them in order to focus on the task of the moment. What will be, will be, as it is meant to be. The pieces of the puzzle are there waiting for assembly and will be discovered in due time. Everything you need will be available when you need it, to do what you need to do. Have faith, close your eyes, and keep walking.
Animals don’t read calendars or clocks. The dog who waits by the door at four in anticipation of his master’s return read the concentration of scent particles in the air to predict the schedule, the pattern. Birds recognize the angle of the sun and day length not which month it is for their migration. Sap runs when temperatures are safe for leaf development.
If you must surrender to the urge to set a timeline for yourself, follow the lead of the universe and avoid those c-words, calendar and clock. Look around the escape room that is your life, to find the anchor for your decision. Use your environment to schedule your journey.
Thinking in a matter of months? Well look at that! A new shoot on the Phalaenopsis Orchid will take 4 to 6 months to flower. So when it is complete, you will make your move.
A matter of hours? Gee, I love how the sunlight plays through the stained glass window in the evening. When it hits that shelf, I’ll head on out.
Deadlines and timelines are arbitrary and artificial in the first place. Time only exists in the Mattersphere, and our wise mind knows how to bend both time and space within the rules of the physical matrix of reality. Synergy will make that flower bloom when you are ready to bloom, and that sunbeam shine when you are ready to shine. But only if you trust her by closing your eyes to clocks and calendars when you have the chance to.
Thrill seekers and risk takers are on the right track. Those searches for adrenaline are searches, and seeking is our purpose. To boldly go where your wise mind has not gone before. To add new perspectives and new dimensions to the collective history stored with Eidolon in the Dattersphere.
Living in the Moment feels thrilling, sensuous, and utterly captivating. You are tethered in a limitless universe with boundless potential. If you don’t understand how to maintain that connection by freeing your mind from the material world, then you try to replicate the sensation by freeing your body from the constraints of the physical world through overloading your sensory brain.
An approximation of enlightenment.
When you find your wise mind and begin to live inside it most of your day, you take risks. You put yourself out there. You make yourself vulnerable. You find everything and everyone fascinating and exciting and immerse yourself intently in simple conversations with complete engagement. People ask for some of what you’re on. People want to join you on your journey.
Sharing knowledge and experience is another primal drive for us. To be the scaffold for others to construct meaning around. To light the pathway for others to explore. This urge drives us to post pictures and tweet thoughts, to write blogs and make comments. Hence the thrill in our heart with each new like, each recognition, each view. A different, less blatant type of thrill seeking but seeking nonetheless.
Our patterns have purpose. All of them. We do what we were designed to do. But like all machines, when we are out of balance we don’t function properly even as we strive to do what we were made for. Even the most dysfunctional, toxic behaviours are rooted in a primal function, a healthy drive that just needs tweaking of the weighting to make it effective once again.
Like the laundry washer that has piled too many items on one side of the drum, when we pile weight in our judgemental brain or our emotional mind, we thrash about unsteadily, and the contents of our heart are waterlogged and flaccid. Reaching inside the drum of our head, and repositioning the load, will wring out the extra weight we carry, and allow the current cycle to finish.
And what a feeling it is to be able to reach the spin cycle and release the dirty water of a lifetime of judgement and emotions!
Hedge your bets and prepare for all eventualities with the hopes that things will come out hopping when Synergy finally presents the opportunity to open the darn box.
Greeting every day with curiosity, hope and acceptance means being ready for anything in any Moment. Being receptive to whatever springs up on you means you’ll never be disappointed with the chances you didn’t take, the opportunities you didn’t seize or the Moments you missed.
Assume all possibilities are open to you until the moment you know the truth.
This includes options you may perceive as negative. Don’t rule out failure or hurdles…in fact, count on them thus they won’t devastate you. Have Plan A, Plan B, in fact prepare the entire alphabet just in case. The more you understand the parameters and possible outcomes for every decision you face, the stronger your position for satisfaction in a perhaps unexpected form.
We don’t know what is best for ourselves. We don’t know what we need. We often don’t know who we even are, so how can we be certain what is in our best interests?
Synergy knows. But it’s up to us to accept her wisdom and be receptive to her gentle guidance. We blind ourselves with our thoughts and feelings, setting our hearts on things that were never meant to be, because we are trapped in our past or dreaming of our future.
Obstacles, barriers and disappointments are merely rungs on the ladder ascending toward enlightenment and true understanding of self, others, and the universe. Our purpose is to discover our purpose, which can’t be chosen, can’t be predicted, only unveiled.
Every decision has a Moment for making it. Not talking about it. Not planning it. Not dreaming about it. Those are not decisions, those are efforts. Until the Moment of Truth, efforts encompassing all possible outcomes yield the best return on Synergy’s investment in us. So, Schrodinger’s cat is both alive and dead, treat it as such until time to open the box!
Living in the moment is what we were designed to do but the short circuit in our brain coupled with our elemental personality can generate complications! Can make moments that are out of alignment with purpose but still based on the sensation of being in the Now.
Living in the moment with intentionality is the key to finding balance, stability, serenity and joy. Living in the moment but following impulses and urges without understanding where they originated – the judgemental mind or the feeling mind or the wise mind – creates dysfunction and dissatisfaction.
Our elemental personality type, with the need to either drop down an energy level or rise up in energy, feeds our feelings. When not satisfied, we get urges to interact with other people, to use them to meet our needs. That is absolutely fine, it is how we were designed to be, how we live in a society. If we didn’t have needs to be met, we wouldn’t be part of a community in the first place! We would live solitary, isolated lives.
For every person who needs to give away, there is a person who needs to receive. Soulmates who can be fulfilled while fulfilling because just like chemical bonds, pairings meet the objective of completing the unstable shell and bringing satisfaction. Equal and opposite forces bring balance, stability and lasting bonds.
The closer we feel we are to satisfaction, the greater the desire to experience it. The more intense the drive for fulfillment. The more volatile the response to the opportunity to jump up an energy level, or jump down. Because it’s right there, peace and serenity, just within reach, just a Moment away…thus in fact those whose behaviour seems to be the least peaceful are in fact the most ready to take that leap and find stability. But that very volatility gets in the way of making the right leap in the Moment, when fears and doubts cause the opposite to stability.
Need creates vulnerability. Vulnerability generates fear. Fear foments distrust. Distrust breeds resistance. Resistance crucifies Moments.
Trusting ourselves, Synergy, and others is critical to truly surrendering, to living intentionally in the Moment, and to finding satisfaction in personal relationships.
This is Synergy 