Tags
#WPLongform, discontent, grounding, home, lotus, mind stories, nomadic life, presence, travel
Being present. Being presence itself. Dropping into this moment. Over and over and over. This is the gift, the challenge, and the opportunity being relentlessly and lovingly presented. Only through presence can we be deeply grounded in the body, deeply here.
Being nomadic we have no external place to be grounded; no home and no familiar surroundings. Only here, only now, only this, and whenever we stray from this, discontent arises and leads inevitably to suffering. The discontent arises in any old way the mind can make up. The mind is an extremely clever and imaginative “machine” that can dream up discontent in a heartbeat, and with our lifestyle it is easiest to dream up a story of discontent because of the constant change. Nothing is familiar, and therefore presumed safe. Every week it’s a new city, a new “home” to get used to, and if we’re not grounded in the body, in the self, in the heart, there’s nothing external for us to cling to.
Presence – being with, being aware of, all that is right here right now. Even more than that, it’s simply being. Awareness. The mind frequently wants me to believe that I need to be doing something different, or that I need to be in a different place, or that things need to be different from what is right here right now. In presence all that falls away: there’s no worrying about the future, no fretting about the past. There’s no “grass is greener” – no “I don’t want to be doing this, I want to be doing that “: there’s only this: this moment, this experience, this feeling, this now.
All this applies to any lifestyle. But being nomadic is really bringing this home to us (no pun intended) because we have none of the usual external props to keep us grounded and provide the illusion of stability. We are endlessly stepping off a cliff into the unknown. So is everyone really, but if you stay in one place it’s not as obvious. It’s only in presence that the cliff disappears. We are both being moved, over and over again, back to presence. It’s the only thing that makes the cliff disappear. In presence everything is okay exactly the way it is.
As we travel we are regularly asked what we are going to do when we stop travelling, the underlying question being “where will you live?” We don’t know. We literally have no idea where or when or what or how. We’re not even looking. The great benefit of living from presence is that it doesn’t matter. We know all we need to know in this moment. What we need to know arises at the time we need to know it.
And so we just keep jumping off that cliff into presence, grounded in our own beings. It is a gift, an opportunity, a blessing, and yes indeed a moment-by-moment challenge. The mind has its relentless stories. We get scared about the future. We get scared about money. We get tired of the constant moving. And so we are relentlessly prompted to return to presence. This is the grand opportunity, and great blessing being presented to us. And in presence all is well.
Jointly written by Alison and Don
Photo of the day: Offerings for the Buddha – lotus blossoms. Mt Kulen, Cambodia
All words and images by Alison Louise Armstrong unless otherwise noted.
© Alison Louise Armstrong and Adventures in Wonderland – a pilgrimage of the heart, 2010-2015.
Adventures in Wonderland 
This is such an important concept to remember, even when you have the external trappings around you. Lovely post and beautiful picture!
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Thank you so much, and I agree, it is a very important concept for everyone.
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Thank you both so much for this post; for finding just the right words to share the concept of Presence with your readers. It has helped me right now – in this very moment – and I know i shall reread it and try to learn to be more mindful of the here and now.
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Thank you Deborah. I’m so glad you find it helpful. It is an on going challenge, and commitment. I believe we only really find our truth in presence, over and over and over.
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I so enjoy reading about your “journey”. I also LOVE the lotus flower. Gorgeous!
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Thank you, I’m so glad you’re enjoying it. The lotuses are everywhere here. They actually farm them, and then turn the outer petals in, just to make them even prettier I suppose.
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How liberating and enslaving, all at once, that moment by moment we are all jumping off cliffs, but some like you land in another place, as in physically, literally in another place, while the rest of us, the majority of us, land in the same place, the same house, the same job, the same city, the same country! And yet, all of us do cover a great distance, from cradle to grave, who’s to say who’s gone farther, where, such as in a soul’s journey, time and space are irrelevant or are everything? I mean maybe all time and all space, the entire universe, heaven and earth, can fit in a small room too, such as in jail or the convent or the same spot under the same tree where Buddha sat for a million years. Sorry I am carried away by your beautiful writing and a little defensive about the fact that I am here in my room rather than dancing on the moon. But thanks to my books and thanks to blogs like yours, I could be anywhere and everywhere, such as India or Cambodia — or Jupiter.
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What a wonderful reply! I’m a little carried away by your writing!
And yes I thoroughly agree with you that everyone is jumping off that cliff, every moment, *and* that there’s no time and space (or that all time and space can, *does*, fit into a small room). I know of more than one person who has reached enlightenment in prison. And from what I know of you, you too have all time and space right where you are because you open to it.
Here’s the other side of the coin – a few years ago (before we became nomadic) we went on a 5 week trip to Europe. I was awake and crying all night, from the first night, and every night (from shock mostly I think) with the deep recognition that I hadn’t gone anywhere – that I’d flown from Canada to Europe, and moved all over Europe, and hadn’t actually gone anywhere at all. It was a huge shock to the system, and a huge gift. And thank you for the reminder of that. It’s exactly what we’re writing about really – that “you” (whoever/whatever exactly that is) never moves. It’s the hub of the wheel no matter what happens externally. Staying in that hub/living from that hub is, I guess, what we mean by being grounded. We find this lifestyle keeps pushing us back there. At the same time I don’t think that “push” is confined to being nomadic 🙂
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This is terrific, Don &Ali! I’ve forwarded it to several people and I know i t’s very helpful to Jane, who is agonizing about being laid off. Thanks,
Kay
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Hi Kay!
Thank you. And thank you for forwarding it.
(((((Hugs for Jane))))) – always a difficult time. Wish her good luck from me.
Hope you’re well and that life is being good to you 🙂
A&D xoxox
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Kudo to you both for accepting the challenge. It’s nice to talk about “the Present Moment” in your armchair of your living room, but you two really are without the safety net. Here is one of my versions of “Home”: http://heartflow2013.wordpress.com/home/
Om Shanti!
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Thank you. It’s true we’re without the conventional safety net, and that provides the impetus, the gift, and the challenge. It’s a blessing that gives us no choice. Presence or suffering? Mmmmmmmm. Not a difficult choice 🙂 And yet it still takes commitment, and a certain vigilance, to not let the mind take over, or to turn it around when we’ve not been paying attention, and it has taken over. We do feel the need to be present is much more relentless and necessary now than when we had a nice comfortable home, and a nice comfortable life.
From your definition of home “it has been my passion and my motor to understand (or better ‘innerstand’) the way consciousness works so that I am able to let go of all that distracts me from my pristine natural state as That”. This is me too. For about as long as I can remember.
Namaste.
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Namaste’ ~
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Very interesting philosophy there.
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Yeah :), it is interesting isn’t it?
I know, I know it’s not for everyone, but it’s been the engine of my whole life – find the truth, find out what’s really here, what life really is.
I never had a career except for this inner drive to wholeness, whatever it looks like, whatever it takes.
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Alison….beautiful….!! that inner drive to wholeness!
I wanted to send you the information on Chiang Mai and can’t figure out how to send it. Don’t think I can do an attachment here. If you send me a note from your email to peacefulheart@rediffmail.com I can forward it along. shanti….kai
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Thanks kai. Relentlessly driven – it’s a grace that can’t be stopped even if I wanted to.
I’ll send an email – thanks for the info re chang mai.
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Are you in Laos now? That’s on my bucketlist, along with Kashmir and Urumqui or Qiqitarjuac, wherever that is and whatever there is. After all the cities we read about all the time, see in the movies — NY, Paris, London, LA, Beijing, Tokyo — I think I want to dream of the little known places, those wonderful places I have ignored for most of my life like Turkmenistan or Igloo*sk, though some of them, I think, are as inhospitable as the very peak of the Everest.
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Yes, we’re currently in Laos though the blog posts are chronologically now about 2 months behind. Sigh. Oh well, I’ll catch up eventually. Or not.
We’re not venturing too far off the beaten track here and are finding Laos very hospitable. We have a week in Vientiene, including two long day trips into the countryside. On Jan 29 we hop a mini-van for Vang Vieng, overnight there, then another mini-van for Luang Prabang. I’m very much looking forward to Luang Prabang – everyone I’ve ever spoken to who’s been there says good things about it.
We like Laos – there’s a very gentle energy here.
So many intriguing places to explore – just the names Kashmir, Urumqui, and Qiqitarjuac make me want to go there.
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this is such a wonderful piece… and thank you for sharing it.. i’m really glad i got to read it
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Thanks kz. Glad you like it.
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“We are endlessly stepping off a cliff into the unknown. So is everyone really, but if you stay in one place it’s not as obvious.”
This is our daily illusion: that just because we have a job, a house to live in, a car, etc., we are somehow protected, somehow safer. People are afraid of the unknown, but they bravely face it every day without even realizing it.
Beautiful post!!! Thank you for sharing your struggles alongside your fun times. It’s encouraging.
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I don’t know how I missed this. But I’ve found it now, over two years later! Thank you so much for your lovely comment.
Right from the start with this blog I was clear that I wouldn’t sugar-coat what full-time travelling is like (or any travelling really – it’s always about leaving your comfort zone).
Alison
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