A Moment of Realization in the Yucatan
by Leslie Karen Lobell, M.A.

    Forget "Earnest": Let's talk about the Importance of Being Present. The Art of Sensuality -- a way of fully experiencing life through awareness, presence, and the exploration of your senses -- begins with being present. Without being present, you cannot know or fully experience what your senses are bringing to you. "Being present." It sounds so simple, almost cliché. Yet it is actually a very difficult challenge for most of us. Especially for those of us who have grown up in Western Culture: we have a tendency either to be looking back at the past or ahead toward the future. Not that this is necessarily a "bad" thing. Certainly, we want to learn from our previous life experiences, so as not to repeat mistakes or fall into the same patterns that have not worked for us in the past. Also, we want to have a vision of what we wish to create in our future, to have goals to work toward, so we may have a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment. Learning from the past and envisioning the future are important. But difficulties arise when we get stuck living in the past (whether that means regretting or feeling guilty about negative experiences, or idealizing and wishing things "could be the way they used to be… in the good old days"). Similarly, it is not healthy always to be either worrying or daydreaming about the future without ever truly experiencing the moment. Most people (except perhaps those who have done extensive therapy or consciousness work, or those who have a regular meditation practice) do not even realize how little time they spend truly being present.

    I was very fortunate when I was growing up: my parents not only loved to travel themselves, but also wanted their children to experience it, as well. By the time I was in my early twenties, I had traveled through much of the United States and Western Europe, as well as through parts of Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean. I had lived for about three months in France and for nearly a year in Greece. I loved to travel: I felt so alive when I was abroad. As a child, I read mythology for fun; as a young adult, I studied languages and anthropology at Dartmouth College. Traveling was a way for me to discover and learn about the people and cultures that captivated my attention.

    I remember very clearly one moment of one day while I was on a trip through the Yucatan in Mexico. I was in my early twenties and I had gone with my parents and my sister to see the Mayan ruins. We went to a few different sites, including Chichen Itza and Uxmal. I believe the place where I had this moment of realization was in Chichen Itza. On the site there were clear trails for the tourists to follow, leading to buildings and temples that had been excavated and were on display to the public. But something caught my attention from several feet off the trail… There, only a few hundred feet or so away, was what looked like a huge mound of dirt -- except sticking out the top of the mound, I could see the top of an unexcavated building. I was not just excited, I felt totally exhilarated. There it was, so close, an unexplored mystery - like something from an Indiana Jones movie! If only I could dig inside there, what might I find? How could the Mexican government just leave it right there and not excavate it?

    As much as I wanted to just walk right off the public trail and go explore "off the beaten path," I let fear and my internalized rules about "being good" and "not getting into trouble" stop me. However, that moment of exhilaration (and the pullback / letdown from it) led to a moment of reflection… I was thinking about how alive I felt in that moment, and how, many times, when I was traveling, I would have moments of experiencing wonder and awe. This sharply contrasted with much of the rest of my life at the time: as a teen and young adult, I had struggled, throughout my day-to-day life, with dissatisfaction, uncertainty, and even periods of mild depression. In that moment in the Yucatan, I had a realization, a great insight: that the difference in my feelings was related to my state of mind. When I was traveling, it was one of the few times that I would spend any time in the present. Most of the rest of the time, I was either focusing on or worrying about the future (e.g., fretting about keeping my grades up, wondering whether or not my current boyfriend would turn out to be "the one," or fearing I might make a poor decision in choosing a career path) or focusing on the past (e.g., feeling annoyed with myself for missing those points on my last test in school, wondering what I had "done wrong" that may have caused the breakup of my last relationship, regretting I had not stayed in Greece rather than returning to the United States for college).

    When I was traveling, I was in a different place in myself: a place in awareness and in the present. More often than in the rest of my life, I was taking time to explore and truly experience something as new. I was looking at everything with fresh eyes, closing those eyes and feeling the breeze on my face, hearing and trying to understand different languages or regional accents, tasting new foods for the first time, taking time to smell flowers along the path… In other words, I was in the moment, having a sensual experience of life. "Being present" was what allowed me to experience the feelings of wonder, awe, and exhilaration. Depression, for me, came from agonizing over the past or worrying about the future. Joy was in the present.
 
Copyright ©2000-2001. All rights reserved. Leslie Lobell
 

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