Awakened Life: Living with Presence and Vitality

Have you ever walked through a day and barely remembered it? 

Or worse, walked through a day and only remembered the stress of it?

I’ve found myself in a grumpy mood lately.  In a negative headspace.  I feel like I’ve been carrying a bag of heavy giant rocks on my back as I try to work through everything I need to accomplish in a day.  I’m grumpy because I want to wake up slow and sip my morning coffee sitting outside listening to the birds chirp their morning song.  I want to walk through the streets of the New England town I’m visiting in, and window shop or coffee shop (I’m turning it into a verb meaning to sit in cafes reading, writing, or contemplating life while also sipping coffee). 

But I have a lot I need to get done. 

Rather, my mind tells me, “You have a lot you need to get done, you have no time to stop, or rest, or have fun.” 

But here is the lunacy of my mind: Everything I have to do, I have also chosen to do. 

That bag of rocks I am carrying - is filled with the stories I tell myself. Stories chiseled from the past and clung to as protection for the future. 

The stories say: “You’re not good enough.”  “This piece of work is not good enough.”  “If you don’t do X, you have no purpose, you won’t matter.”  “Life is not fair.”  “I cannot rely on anyone.”

Your rocks may not be the same as my rocks, we each carry the burden of our own stories, but these stories – especially the ones we tell ourselves over and over – can become energy drains, pulling us away from the abundance of life happening right now.

However, let’s not be too hard on ourselves.  The human brain is evolutionarily designed to create stories. Unlike other animals, the human brain has a unique capacity to contemplate the future and reflect on the past, weaving these thoughts into coherent narratives to help us make sense of life. 

Our narrative capacity can be a source of tremendous creativity and invention.  However, when operating in survival mode, we tend to focus our energy on the past (what went wrong) or future (what might go wrong), often in an effort to predict, control, or protect. This vigilance, however, comes at a cost: it can rob us of the abundance found in the present moment and exhaust the full, vibrant self-energy that can be available only through complete presence in the now.

The presence I am thinking about is more than being in the moment — it’s a full-body, full-soul awakening. When we bring our complete awareness to this moment — not just through our senses of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell, but also our inner sensing: our open heart, our intuition, our energetic connection — something shifts. The moment expands. We expand. We live and experience in a joyful, vibrant state. 

There is an aliveness.  A vitality.  An awakening. 

We’ve all met those people — the ones who seem high on life?  My guess is they have set their bag of rocks down. 

So, how do we create this shift for ourselves? 

Maybe we choose to show up to each moment unburdened by the stories of the past, the voices in our head, the fears of the future.  An awakened life is not a life free of stress or challenge, but what if we showed up to those moments senses open, heart open, a beginner, full of wonder, and curiosity? 

Perhaps by arriving more fully into this moment, by engaging our full energetic presence, we might just awaken.