02 Aug 2013 Comments Off on How to Deal with Your Worst Moments, Especially When They Seem to Go On Forever

How to Deal with Your Worst Moments, Especially When They Seem to Go On Forever

What makes a “worst moment”? It boils down to pain. Pain can be physical (sensation), emotional (loss, helplessness, despair), or psychological (fear). Much more common than a “worst moment” is the dread of a worst moment. I call this “futurizing.”

When pain is unbearable we pass out (literally black out, go unconscious) or check out (this ranges from not hearing people talking to us to having a psychotic break — losing touch with worldly reality). This level of pain is rare, and this reaction is relatively rare. When you relentlessly worry about and imagine upcoming pain, you’re futurizing. You’re not living – you’re holding your breath, walking on eggshells, and dreading what the future will bring even though it is highly unlikely.

“The worst thing you’ll ever have to face in life is a thought, a sensation, a feeling, a sound, a smell, happening in THIS moment,” says spiritual teacher Jeff Foster.

When you actually take a look at your pain, rather than avoid it or try to deaden it, pain breaks out into thoughts, sensations, feelings, sounds, smells, tastes, sights–anything the five senses have to offer.

Is your pain unbearable right now? If it was, you couldn’t be reading this essay.

Moment by moment, pain, be it physical, emotional, or psychological, is not only bearable, but potentially the moment when your perception shifts and you realize what seemed to be “the worst” was actually the opening you had been waiting for.

Peace comes when you realize that you’ve been making yourself god by taking your fears seriously. Fears that the pain you have now will never stop, fears that you’ll never meet someone and have a family, fears that you’ll never get a good job (or you’ll lose the job you have), fears that you won’t be able to pay the bills, fears that you’ll never realize your potential, fears that your health will fail and you won’t be able to take care of yourself and those you love, fears that you’ll be at the mercy of unkind people, or people who are incompetent, fears that you can’t overcome your addictions. Fears, fears, fears. It’s best to get well-acquainted with your own, so that you can stop futurizing and choose to enter the present moment.

This moment, now, is where peace is.

There’s an opening, a holy instant, where time dissolves into timelessness, and the “you” you thought you were melts away. Here lies freedom. And this moment is available right now. Feel it? There’s no time like the present to recognize what you really are. Turn your attention to Truth. You don’t have to know how. You don’t have to do anything. Just stop playing god, and instead, “… spend a quiet moment opening your mind to His correction, and His love”* now.