Trusting the Present

Image by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Sitting in meditation this morning, I asked Source what I needed to know.  The phrase “Trust the Present” immediately came in.

This is a big one for many of us.  We’re constantly reminded to live in the present, but to trust it is a whole other thing.

Masters and teachers have told us for years that the present is all there is.  Both the past and the future are thought forms that exist in our minds, one as a memory and the other as an imagined scenario.

When we live, though, we live in the present.  

To trust the present is to trust how things are right now.  That’s fine if things are good, but what if they’re not so great?  What if, in the present, a family member receives a cancer diagnosis? What if, in the present, you’re laid off from work?  What if, in the present, your house floods in a hurricane?

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And what if, in the present, a Baker’s Cyst bursts behind one of your knees??  About an hour after writing the above text, a cyst in the back of my left knee ruptured.  No lie, the pain was just excruciating. Thank God I was at home, unlike 4 years ago when it happened out of town.

I couldn’t move from the couch for about an hour as my body tried to make sense of what had occurred.  I kept thinking—is this why that message came in so loudly?  I’m really supposed to trust this incredibly crappy present???

After finally gathering myself, I got down to the floor and inched to the bedroom to get a brace to stabilize the knee.  From there I went across the hall to my office where it took 3 tries to get up into the rolling desk chair.  Then with the chair, I could roll myself backwards to a closet for a cane and to the kitchen for ibuprofen.

All this had taken another hour and I was absolutely present for every single second.  Did I trust it?  That wasn’t even on the radar anymore, it was only about what needed to happen next.

Now 24 hours later, I can hobble with the cane.  Since then, a friend brought more ibuprofen and took the trash cans to the street, two other friends offered to bring food, and my sister is coming tomorrow for a few days. I am grateful.

When things like this happen we can’t see the big picture; that will have to come later.

But in the present moment, when we don’t know what’s going on, we really have no choice but to trust. We’re here, alive on planet Earth and we have to trust it all—the noun of “our life” as well as the verb of “living our life.”

Fully trusting the present is asking a lot. Fully trust the present.