A Vacation From My Vacation

In a few days, I’ll be leaving for a long road trip up and down California with my family.

We have hotel reservations in four cities across the state for our thirteen-day excursion. The youngest in the family is only a year old, so we’ve decided to limit the driving to five-hours per day.

After attending a wedding in San Francisco, we will be heading down to San Diego where we’ll be swimming at Mission Beach and visiting Sea World and the famous San Diego Zoo. At some point, we will be taking the two older boys to Knott’s Berry Farm which will mean a small trip north for the day.

I remember some pilots I used to fly with—especially the ones with big families like mine—telling me how relieved they were to be working again because they’d finally get a chance to relax and sleep. They weren’t kidding.

Don’t get me wrong, this trip to California will be loads of fun—we’ll be nailing the whole work-hard, play-hard thing—but it’s going to be a lot more tiring than our normal day-to-day routine.

Most of us love vacations and we look forward to it all year. We get precious little time off, so it’s hard not to want to make the best of our vacations and squeeze as much as possible into every waking moment of the day.

As a result, our vacations somehow end up with the busiest schedule of the entire year! All travel arrangements, pre-paid events, and visits with family and friends have to be carefully coordinated.

Most of the time during vacations such as these, our brain is on overdrive, engaging in some sort of practical thought or another. We’re always doing something: ensuring everyone in the family has been fed, hydrated, and has had that all-important pee break, and doing headcounts so we don’t end up in some crazy HOME ALONE situation.

But you can still go on vacation with your family and get a real vacation from your thoughts.

When you’re not driving and the kids aren’t screaming in your ear and you have a second to yourself, just let go and don’t follow any thought. It just takes a few moments. (I’m going to give it a try and I’ll tell you how things turn out when I return. Promise.)

When taking mini-vacations from thought becomes a habit, then not only will you get some genuine R&R during your vacation, that inner peace will underlie your activities throughout the year, even when you’re working.

Have you gone on vacation yet?

The Perfect Opportunity

I talk a lot about being present in my blog posts. About experiencing the now directly, without the interference of psychological thought.

But is it possible to do that all the time?

I can’t really say that I know, because I haven’t had that experience. Certainly not all the time or even for an entire day.

I don’t know if it’s even possible. I mean, what about deep sleep? Could I be present then? If so, would it technically qualify as deep sleep?

What’s this about opportunities anyway?

It certainly feels like certain situations and states of mind are more conducive to the experience of being present than others; that there’s a perfect setting for being in the now. A perfect opportunity.

Perhaps “opportunity” isn’t the best way to describe it, because the word implies it may not be possible to be present all the time, and not having experienced uninterrupted presence for extended periods, I’m not in the position to make such a determination.

What I know

I only write about what I have experienced directly. It would be disingenuous of me to do otherwise.

So since I don’t recall being present while in the deep-sleep state, that’s out.

I have had a few very rare experiences of presence during the dream state, so I’ll go over the dream state, but only briefly.

The vast majority of my experiences of presence have occurred during the waking state, and therefore that will be the focus of this post.

The Dream State

Because my experiences have been few and far between, I won’t talk much about the dream state except to say that I’ve noticed much of what happens in that state of consciousness depends on what was going on just before I fall asleep.

In all instances that can I recall, if my attention was on being present just before falling asleep, then that attention seemed to lay the foundation for being present during the dream state. It was never a guarantee I’d be present while dreaming, however.

When it did happen, the dreams occurred as they normally would, but the experience was both peaceful, full of energy, and there was this feeling of witnessing.

The Waking State

Like I said earlier, some situations seem to be more conducive to the experience of presence than others.

Situations where it is apparently difficult to be present are far more common than the peaceful settings that make presence feel so natural.

In the previous millennium, many seekers, in an attempt to find the perfect opportunity or setting for presence, would remove themselves from society. They would go to an ashram or a monastery. Or maybe they’d just hang out in a cave and beg for a living (which in India at least, was not considered a bad thing).

Obviously, most of us have responsibilities. Things we “have to do.” Most of us have jobs, and most of these jobs are fairly demanding, and so we’re not really thrilled with the idea of spending the rest of our lives, or even a few decades, in some ashram.

I don’t think trying to hide from problems and conflict in order to attain inner peace is the answer. It certainly isn’t for me.

First and foremost, the only thing keeping anyone from being present is the compulsion to live in the world of psychological thought. And that being the case, there’s no place to hide from yourself and the voice in your head that comments on everything as life unfolds.

The decision to be present is not an easy thing. There’s the tremendous inertia one has to overcome in order to break free from the powerful grasp of psychological thought. The ego uses thought to hold on to its existence. That’s why people think nonstop in the waking state.

In difficult situations, when the decision is made to be present, the experience tends to be more profound because of the contrast between turmoil and inner peace.

The ego doesn’t have much of an argument about not being present in situations that are externally peaceful. So that makes it easier to be present, though, oddly, because there’s little challenge there, there’s a tendency to get lazy and put it off.

You don’t have to throw yourself into hellish situations just for the challenge of being present under near-impossible conditions. You don’t have to because life tends to do all the work for you. If you want misery and suffering, just stick with psychological thought and near-impossible opportunities will present themselves with unfailing persistence.

The Three Kinds of Opportunities

1. The Easy Opportunity

These opportunities are so easy, presence, it seems, should be automatic. Like a lovely stroll through a park, or relaxing in a pool on a float and without a care in the world.

I often get occasional breaks—a mini-moment of external peace. Some days more than others. I might have a chance to just lie on the sofa after a long day’s work, or take the dogs out for a stroll.

I don’t have to worry about very convincing arguments from the ego, though I get some kind of resistance. Thoughts like: “Now that you’ve got a few minutes to yourself, you really should think about what you’re going to do about getting your budget out of the red,” Or, “When the hell are you planning on cleaning out that garage?” Or, “What are you going to do about that vacation? If you don’t set things up in advance, you won’t be able to afford it.”

Those are examples of the psychological thoughts. Thoughts whose greater purpose is to be set free. Thoughts without which we simply are present.

During those peaceful moments, being free of psychological thought is much easier, but it isn’t always a given. I still have to decide not to follow a psychological thought; to just let it be. Like a stray cat, it will eventually go away and leave me alone, if there’s no food for it to thrive on.

Sometimes, when opportunities like these present themselves, I let myself get lazy by following the though: “Yeah, well anybody can do it now. Why not wait until it’s a bit more challenging and take these few free moments of time I have to myself to resolve some big-picture issues I’ve left on the backburner for months?”

2. The Average Opportunity

This is the usual, every-day opportunity and it’s the hardest kind for me to take advantage of. My mind comes up with a million-and-one reasons not to be present because I tell myself I’ve got practical things that I need to take care of, and the fact is, I really do. I might be working at my job. Paying bills, having things fixed that really need fixing. That sort of thing. Practical activities which cannot easily be postponed, so I’d have to be present during those activities, and that could be quite difficult.

3. The Nearly Impossible Opportunity

This is the opportunity that is so damned insanely difficult, it hardly seems humanly possible to be present, and even calling it an opportunity could be construed as utter madness.

I love those nearly impossible opportunities for two reasons:

1.  The experience is typically a lot more profound

2. It presents a huge challenge, and I love a challenge

Difficult situations require a lot of energy to be present. These situations tend to pull me into a vortex of psychological thinking. I may have someone yelling at me, demanding a response. I may be in a situation where I have to think of the future, and it’s difficult to not inject psychological thought.

I remember when several doctors were suggesting I undergo radiation and chemo, which carried with it a nasty list of side effects with varying degrees of probability, because even though my situation was unique and undocumented, it seemed to them to be a safer course of action. How could I make that decision practically, without psychological thought, from a state of presence? Truth be told, I didn’t. There were no “facts” to work with, and like most of the really tough decisions in life, it was plagued with emotions and unknowns.

Whatever decision I made seemed like a crapshoot. That was one opportunity for presence I failed to take.

In really nasty situations that require swift action, I typically think, “There’s no way you’re going to pull that presence stunt on me now. Come on, dude, this is serious. Mess around with that new age shit when you’re on the beach or something. This is important. You’ll be all spaced out if you try and be ‘present,’ whatever the hell that is supposed to be. You won’t care, and you’ll regret it afterwards. But mark my words, it’ll be too late then.”

When that happens, I remind myself of how I love the challenge of taking on the impossible and how, if I manage to be present, even for a short period of time, the experience is almost always intense.

Situations of inner turmoil are harder to deal with than situations of outer turmoil. This is because in order to be present I have to let go of psychological thought and just be.

Situations of outer turmoil often call for immediate action and rely primarily on practical thinking.

Situations of inner turmoil, however, like in the radiation/chemo example, involve deep attachment to psychological thought and the emotions it brings. It’s still possible to step back and break free, but it’s a lot harder. I usually end up lying to myself, insisting I have to follow some psychological thought for this or that practical reason.

Close examination will reveal that there is never a practical reason to follow a psychological thought.

Practical thought, on the other hand, is a different story all together. I don’t need to reason with myself to follow practical thought. I don’t ask myself, “My exit is coming up, should I turn or should I continue on the highway?” I just do it.

I can tell you from experience that, so far at least, when I’ve taken advantage of those nearly impossible opportunities and managed to be present, nothing “bad” has ever happened. I don’t ever regret it, like I often tell myself I will. In fact, I tend to cherish the memory (which creates another challenge because I then I’ve just added to the list of memories I have to learn to let go of).

The Perfect Opportunity

Some might seek externally peaceful settings in order to mirror that presence internally. Others may not have time and simply strive to be present during their average day.

A few of us are even into death-defying activities because they limit the mind to simple, practical thought, and there’s no time or room for psychological thinking.

You might be expecting me to conclude that there are no perfect opportunities and therefore we should take what we get and run with it.

But there’s always a perfect opportunity.

And that’s right now.

Whether you judge the opportunity to be easy, average, or downright impossible, it’s here. You are that opportunity. You are that presence.

All it takes is the decision to let go of psychological thought and be what you are.