When we’re living in the mind, we’re always in the past or future. For example, we’re thinking about what happened and how I could have done it differently. Or about how they did that to us. Or we’re catastrophizing what may happen, like a typical “news” show. Or imagining a better future while rejecting what is here now. 

The challenge is that trauma predicts trauma. What is unresolved expects more of itself and expands with attention. This happens when it’s regurgitating, not resolving. It’s taking you on a loop. The same themes coming round over and over. Much of our mental babble is just that.

The key here is not to judge yourself but just, with curiosity, notice where you’re dwelling. As we become more conscious and heal some, we “interrupt prediction,” as they term it in psychology. We interrupt the loop.

There is a common theme in spiritual circles to live in the present. That can actually be another loop, trying to control our experience. Or we discover some calm within and abandon the body and emotions.

Yet true spirituality is lived in our human life, not divorced from it. If we go deeper, we can discover that under all the mental looping and emotional resistance is the body.

The body only lives in the present. It can react to the looping with a stress response, as if its happening now. If we break the loop, our natural calm presence is right here.

That’s why they call it “embodied.”
Davidya