After getting caught up, chewed up, and spit out, though we may look bad, we always have the choice of turning back to innocence.
This is done by lifting the attention from the thought. Here are the simple directions: To get back to innocence, go into the body. Go into the heart. We enjoy life right where we are instead of making it wrong or not enough or that it has to be enjoyed later or elsewhere or under other conditions not yet achieved.
Part of enjoying right where we are is we begin to notice the things around us and let them move us and feel us. The tumescent mind will tell us we need to go or get somewhere instead of enjoying right where we are. But we can lift the attention from those thoughts as well. We remember it’s all a game, introducing levity and letting ourselves go in the direction the game is going.
Before we make it back inside our bodies, hearts, and ultimately our optionality, we may get tossed around a bit by lingering negative thought patterns. When we’re pulled into their density, we’re pulled out of the present moment into the future.
The only way to come back to being enough is to come back to the moment, by coming back to the play available in the life right in front of us.
We ask ourselves, What in this moment happening right now is good? Even in the presence of the good, we acknowledge the concentration; the density will still have this pull to it. It will pull the attention like a magnet, but we have the option of lifting it instead. If we have familiarity with the place of optionality, we can return it to its home. Inside of optionality, the negative charge we could not seem to shake, dissipates.
It’s as if the mind can empty, the experience of contracting ends, and spaciousness is restored. If we do not peak and shift our attention successfully, we will likely take action in some unconscious way, most likely along the familiar grooves we’ve established with prior actions. We can change these habits, but it is challenging. The pull is strong. Changing our movement here, though—in the here and now—is a triumph and a lot of fun.
It can even generate a new, small pocket of optionality where a sense of freshness can occur. It’s important to note that
The pursuits we carry out will be based on perceived survival, and the return to optionality, more often than not, will happen inside a chamber of “heavy pressure” or pain.
In this difficult field, charged material again begins to accrete, re-forming the density. Consciousness (the optionality mind) is difficult to access; in order to get it, more pressure must be applied to cut through the density. Here, where we live in the results of having gone with the pull, we inhabit our reactions: We are anger, we are sadness, and the actions then take place of their own accord. It’s the inverse relationship to optionality.
Here’s the trick with optionality: In the beginning is where the most fun exists—we don’t feel at the mercy of anything.
Each time we go out and make it back we become more resilient and informed and are no longer in danger in that domain. It’s like building Erotic immunity—provided we make it back. When we let ourselves be swept out to sea, there is always the danger of getting stuck in a riptide, of getting stuck for life in a density.
