Each day when you get up in the morning, ready yourself for what is to come by opening your heart and mind. To welcome the world you need just press play and permit the day to unfold. Each circumstance beckons you to lean in and belong to it. This requires faith and courage knowing that the world is unpredictable. If you do not trust in the now, if you don’t “press play,” then you live your life on rewind, rehashing and reviewing events that happened days, months and years ago. All too often, we replay past conversations in our heads, deliberating to try to make amends and set the record straight. In the rehash-asana, we go over and over the tape loop of what has been and so live our lives on repeat.
When we are not on rewind, we live on fast-forward, rehearsing for what is to come. Full of anticipation, we forecast how things should be. We jump ahead with urgency and worry, in a kind of dress rehearsal for tomorrow’s scenes. Living on fast-forward is particularly confusing to the nervous system for when we project ourselves into the future, Star Trek style, we “beam up,” dematerializing from the here and now. Whether in rewind or fast-forward, the tape of the mind whirs and screechs like reeling cassette tapes in the boom boxes of old.
This life beckons you to stay in the flow of what is arising. “Only go straight” said the Korean master Seung Sahn to all his students. To “press play” is to “only go straight,” right into the heart of your situation. For this you need fortitude and trust that you can take things as they come and respond accordingly. If you scroll behind or scroll ahead, you generate static in your nervous system like the empty hiss on the AM radio when caught between stations. When you attune to the immediacy of what is happening now, your signal comes in clear and crisp.
So don’t hold yourself back or press yourself forward. This will exhaust your life-force and wear down your vital powers. If you find yourself rehashing and rehearsing, you need to come back and press play. Practice “just press play” again and again. Then you will gain the confidence to live your life in accord with what is unfolding right before your eyes.
