Break Into the Moment

It wasn’t until I stopped thinking about being around Odin that I began being with Odin, and that is when our relationship began. The result was a profound change in myself and my life because my interactions with people evolved too.

In the Thinking

Thinking is a constant thing, and it is a great, boundless power we have. It’s what we egoistically flaunt as our superiority over the rest of Earth’s life. Positive, creative thinking builds our world; negative, destructive thinking destroys it. Would we be so destructive if we could stop thinking long enough to notice how much we have lost?

Yes. And we know it. We meditate, pray, lose ourselves in a book, in music or making love; we scare ourselves out of thinking on roller coasters, and we sleep. Then we go right back to thinking, in a straight line; linear. We have a past and a future, but rarely do we anchor ourselves in the present.


In the Moment

Our greatest strength is our greatest weakness. As powerful as thinking is, it denies living, it prevents life, there’s no room for being. Life is all around us, we are a part of it, we are from the same source, yet we think instead of live.

Animals aren’t cursed with thinking. We surround ourselves with animals, yet we aren’t able to stop thinking long enough to be with them. We aren’t able to be with animals safely unless we are “in the moment” and that means not thinking. That doesn’t mean your dog or cat will attack you. The animals we call “pets” have adapted to us and forgive us for our inability to not think.


In the Joy

For me, it took being around a 1,600 pound horse to learn how to shut my brain off, not think, and be “in the moment.” That is the only way to listen, be aware and understand an animal that could easily injure me because of its own nature. The language of a horse is subtle compared to what we are usually able hear.

Even though it’s possible to enjoy a horse, marvel at its power and appreciate its beauty near or from afar without being “in the moment,” much more bursts into being when thought is stopped. The ripple of muscles, the willingness to trust, the soft eye, the flick of an ear, the acceptance, the heart, the playfulness, the companionship flood our earthly senses to soothe our soul.


In It; Not of It

To step out of our own nature and into the moment has an infinite number of benefits in all aspects of our lives because we are truly able to hear. We can hear with all of ourselves instead of just our ears. We break out of understanding based on our own filters and preconceptions and open ourselves to ‘walk a mile in another’s shoes.’ We jump out of and past the need to judge and be judged, accept and be accepted. We no longer obsess, worry, stagnate, suffer.

Yes, it is our incredible strength to think, yet we open ourselves to infinite potential when we master not thinking to be “in the moment.” It is then and only then that we are able to walk through mundane reality without the weight of its boundaries.