Counterintuitively, doing nothing all summer long wasn’t so frustrating as you might imagine.

When I wish for something other than the status quo, when I don’t allow myself to accept my circumstances, the conflict of frustration begins.

I arrived home from my operation dog tired. All physical exertion caused unpleasant dramatic effects. So exercise was obviously something to avoid.

With that, fatigue held me back. Fatigue was more of a welcome than a hindrance, because I wanted to rest, to sleep. My sleeps so refreshed me, I kind of looked forward to being tired. This became a self-sustaining cycle of pleasant reward for giving in to sleep.

Everyone agreed it had been a good summer!

My daytime luxury was to sit in the sun in the garden for long periods of time. I’d photograph insects and flowers, snooze. And then photograph flowers and insects.

Knowing that I was limited to these activities, grateful I have no need of employment, and with no other obligations, these few things quickly became what I owned.

I strongly suspect there is no need for anyone to experience frustration as long as their consciencious attention is directed towards observation of the fruits of the moment.

I learned to work on this internal reward system when I was still an employee at work, most often performing to others’ orders at others’ set times of day.

The moment of my activity becomes the world of my engagement and so it becomes my engagement with the whole world.

With the most repetetive boring work tasks, I set myself miniature milestones to achieve. That way I competed for efficiency with only myself. Only I and nobody else rewarded me for reaching my own set targets as I worked through my day.

I had no need to compete with others at work. The fact was I had no time to look over my shoulder, while I was so absorbed in my keeping up with my personal best.

These principles applied to filling sacks with builder’s rubble, as much as to achieving sales targets.

This state of mind can come from fiercely focusing on what my mind is making of where my body is, with every one of my senses awake, tuned, alert and receptive.

There is nothing special or specifically prescribed to concentrate on. After all, where my body is located, it is surrounded by sights, textures, sounds, scents – an unending procession of the external stimuli of Realia!

I, or you, or any one can engage in doing this close focusing from time to time, if we like.

Radical life-enhancements that can permanently change the way I perceive the quality of my life derive from this style of applied attention when I choose to take the time to plunge myself into and practise immersion in the sensory of the moment, either by choice, or because some life event, such as illness or injury brings these choices front and centre.

In my EveryNow blog posts, I try to write about these fruits of microcosmic inspection. My motive is simply to share the joy and the sweetness they bring.

I know from my own experience, there is an uncomplicated way to release joy and open floodgates of love and peace, when I can recognise the distractions of frustration, fear and anger as illusory, irrelevant and wholly superfluous to human requirements!

What validates this leap into a blissful state, where fear has no existence and rushes of love flit and flutter about with me on stage in the moment? Well, for a start, being intensely nose-to-nose with the absence of time in the flying moment is thunderingly awesome.

Here we have the pleasures of non-attachment, where I cultivate my close attention, and it returns intensity of awareness to me without locking any part of me into what I am doing with my directed attention.

The pleasure of being released from the leg-irons of the Past, and the cheeky cheery turning of my back on the caverns of Future is hardly worth bothering to explain.

And explaining is not the thing. The thing is to be thankful. Gratitude is the right reaction. Be grateful for release into lightness of heart. Be thankful for sudden intimacy with the world of intuition.

Accept and thank my lucky stars for the oddness of being able to read hearts!

Flow in the moment helps self examination. In the moment when a fragment of birdsong triggers my smile, it triggers also my self love. The union of self with self is union with the whole of existence. What other respectful ways of being glad are there than the gladnesses of humility, awe and gratitude?

~ Love is present EveryNow