One of the things that interests me is the phenomenon of life altering moments. I enjoy the practice of dissecting such moments, trying to figure out what makes them occur, and learning/developing ways to capitalize on them. I believe this type of pursuit is inherently a personal one, but that some of what is found along this line of investigation can be universally useful, to one extent or another. Great minds have done this to a much larger degree than I am capable of, but I believe each one of us can add to the pool of available tools for ourselves, if no one else.

In my life I have experienced, and can identify, several such moments. Everyone’s life is peppered with them. The instants of – “Ah hah!”, that come along and free our thinking and relationship to our personal experience of life in fundamental ways. I have already talked about one here. There have been others that were equally liberating.

One such moment happened to me in August of 2005. I was at a support group meeting listening intently to that night’s speaker. He said the phrase, “I just got fucking tired of it”, and the lights went off in my brain and soul. At that moment I adopted finally, and conclusively, a method of eating that is making my weight loss goals come true in a way that I have never before experienced. Before that moment diet plans were always a matter of “white knuckling” my way through, enduring it until it was over. I am no longer on a diet. My method of eating has actually changed.

When I look at the factors in that moment that allowed for/caused that deep fundamental shift I see the following -

1. My desperate hope that there might be a way out
2. My willingness to change
3. My showing up to the meeting
4. My intensely present listening
5. My history of success and failure to that date
6. The speaker’s words
7. The speaker’s intent to help

Using crude math (the full range of factors present would make a prohibitive list, here I have listed what I feel where the most important), I see that over 2/3 of the factors present were my doing. I have similar findings in examining the other moments that I am aware of that made such a significant, and positive change. I take this as a point of responsibility and immense power. Also, being that I think I am more, or less, the same as any other human being, I take this to mean that we all can have such amazing moments if we make ready for them.

These moments of revelation come along in each of our lives, and we all get the chance to “get it”, to understand, to experience Grace, to relax and be enlightened. I believe there are tools one can learn to make theses moments more likely. Zen meditation, with its focus on awareness of the present moment is one such excellent example. Prayer is another. The available knowledge pool of the human race is chock full of such useful methods, and each of us is tasked with finding the ones that work best for us. Faith, prayer, meditation, breathing, deep consideration, stretching, fitness, chanting, energy exchange, positive thinking, smiling; all of these and more are useful. Devoting some time to researching and experimenting with these methods has proven to be terribly useful to me, and I whole heartedly recommend such.

Each one of us has equal opportunity to “get it”. The way to getting to “get it” is to make oneself ready. In my opinion this is what the great liberators of our world did, to one degree or another. Buddha, Jesus, Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Marcus Aurelius, Bhagavan Mahashi, Shree Maa; these and others have been able to “get it” over extended periods. To my current understanding that means they were able to foster such strong personal conditions that each moment was a great “Ah hah!” Each and every one of has that opportunity, every moment of every day – and it is my belief that we all do “get it”, to one degree or another, given time.