There's No Place Like Now

What do a landing pad, postpartum depression, and recovering from divorce have in common?

Apparently, me.

All three were moments in my life when I entertained the idea of not wanting to be here anymore. The last two probably make sense to most people, but the landing pad might require a little explanation.

Slightly embarrassing to admit…but at one point, I landscaped a landing pad on my front lawn because I felt so disconnected from everyone and everything here that I just wanted my alien people to come and get me. Honestly, it made perfect sense at the time. If they were going to come rescue me, how were they supposed to know where to land?

I was suffering. I didn’t know who I was, why I was here, or what the point was. Life was ‘ok enough’, but just…why? Looking back, I can see that so much of that suffering came from being completely disconnected from the experience of actually being here.

This is why presence matters so much to me now. When we consciously create a bubble to exist in the quantum field, the whole point is to be here for the experience. Not yesterday. Not six months from now. Here.  When we’re not here, we’re usually suffering. We’re replaying something that already happened or worrying about something that hasn’t happened yet.

And no, I’m not saying you can’t have goals or make plans. Please still pay your bills and make your dentist appointments. I’m talking about the difference between creating and worrying.

When we’re actually present and creating, we aren’t obsessing over whether it’s going to work. We’re doing the thing. We’re experiencing it. We’re letting it become whatever it becomes.

Maybe that’s why so many people who have accomplished extraordinary things talk about failure as one of their greatest teachers.  Failure is a perspective. Maybe we just created something that had a certain lifespan, learned what we needed to learn from it, and then it died.

Cool.

Create again.

That’s kind of the game.

I get to witness a lot of this through my work with quantum hypnosis. People sit down with me and, within a few hours, tell me things they may not have told anyone else. They bare their souls, sometimes saying things that surprise even them.  My job isn’t to tell them what to believe or how to live their lives. I listen. I ask questions. I follow the threads. I notice patterns. Sometimes it feels like I’m watching someone pull a giant tangled ball of yarn out of their life and slowly discover that there was actually a pattern underneath it all.

I’ve heard some pretty wild stories. Bliss, trauma, grief, love, synchronicity, loss, transformation—the whole human circus.

And I’ve noticed something: when we’re stuck inside the micro of an experience, it can be almost impossible to see anything other than the problem. We’re staring at the one terrible thing that happened and asking, “Why? Why did this happen? Why me? What am I supposed to do with this? I feel stuck in a loop.”

But zoom out. Get up into the eagle view for a minute. Let’s BE PRESENT.

From there, sometimes you can see things you couldn’t see from the ground. You can see the lesson. The connection. The gift. The way one painful thing eventually led somewhere beautiful.

That’s what I believe happens when we leave the body. We finally get the wide-angle lens. We see the whole life instead of being trapped inside individual scenes. Maybe the thing we thought was the worst thing ever turns out to have been one of the most important things that happened to us.

This is why in QHHT sessions I tell my clients it’s about trusting the present moment. To trust the very first thing that comes up and then experience it fully. Don’t immediately decide it’s weird. That it’s not the right thing or what it should be.  Don’t edit it. Don’t make it more acceptable. Follow it and see where it goes.

Because there’s a huge difference between saying, “I went swimming this weekend,” and actually experiencing the swim.

The first version is: “I went swimming. It was fun.”

The second version is: I’m at a family cabin. There’s this long wooden dock, and when I step onto it, the wood is freezing beneath my feet. I suddenly realize how cold it actually is outside. I walk to the edge and want to jump in, but I’m also thinking, “This water could be absolutely awful.”

My family is already in the water yelling at me to jump. They start chanting my name. I can hear their voices echoing across the lake. I finally jump and immediately discover that the water is, in fact, absolutely awful. Freezing. Goosebumps everywhere. I scream. Everyone laughs.

But I stay.

Then the water starts to feel better. A friend’s boat pulls up. The sun comes out. And suddenly three herons fly overhead and land in the water.

I’m standing there thinking, “Holy shit. I’ve always wanted to see a heron in the wild.”

That is the difference between knowing about an experience and actually having it.

And I think that’s what I’m here to do now.

To experience things in a much different way.  The things I feel called toward. The things that scare me a little. The things that make me curious. The things that make me wonder what the hell is going to happen next. I still use my brain. I still make decisions. Sometimes I think things through for a long time, and sometimes I just know. But I’ve become much more comfortable with not knowing how everything is going to turn out.

My values are my guideposts. My intention matters. But curiosity is what keeps me moving.

What we discover in hypnosis, is that at the end of all of this I’m going to have to report back to God.

“So, here’s what happened. Here’s what it felt like. Here’s what I learned.  How did I do?”

I love the idea that maybe our existence actually expands the Creator. Maybe God already contains every possibility—the past, the future, everything that could ever be—but through us, those possibilities get to be experienced. The ‘being’ part.

Perhaps God knows what swimming is, but God gets to know what my swim was like because I was here to experience it.

We can read every spiritual book ever written. We can understand every concept intellectually. But we have bodies. We have senses. We have this bizarre little planet and this absurdly short window of time to actually experience it.

And when I think about the times I didn’t want to be here, I also realize how little I valued myself.  Maybe I even confused disappearing with humility.  But I don’t think humility means hiding yourself or making yourself smaller. I think humility is recognizing that you are part of something bigger and then being willing to participate in it.

It doesn’t have to be some enormous spiritual mission. Maybe it’s simply being fully yourself, staying connected, being of service when you can, and allowing your particular little life to add something to the whole.

For me, being alive has become more than something I’m grateful for. It feels like something I’m accountable for.  That I am a responsible steward of. All of it—the beautiful, the painful, the ridiculous, the confusing, the magical.  Only human beings get to experience ice cream, lovemaking, sorrow, jumping out of airplanes, touching trees the way we do…it’s in no other place (that we may remember).

And maybe, when it’s all over, We will all have an interesting story to report back.

As Neem Karoli Baba (Maharaj-ji) once said, “Suffering clears away bad karma. Don’t curse hardship, it’s often God’s way of cleaning your mirror so you can reflect the light.”