The inherent beauty of the moment

Last Sunday snow flurries were coating the earth with soft white snow. The temperature dropped, the roads were icy and the trees shimmered against a penetrating azure sky. Now one week later the temperature touched 74 degrees, the snow has melted and gardens are being planted.

Change is constant: in subtle ways and in ways that are too obvious to miss. But the commonality is the inherent beauty of each moment, of each event, of each person, of each experience. In Tantric philosophy this beauty is called shri. It is a life- affirming energy that pulses inside of us. It connects us with everything.

We forget things. We forget our keys, we forget our shri. We will always lose sight of shri and then reconnect. We need the change, we need to be reminded of the opposite of shri to appreciate what we already know. So we experience what appear to be opposites, but the opposites complete and compliment each other.

When we connect with the rhythms of nature, the journey seems easy. When we become too rigid and lose our connection, the journey becomes difficult and painful. Sometimes we are filled with the beauty of the moment, totally immersed in shri. Other times we need to step back and find a different perspective when times are tough. Shri is always there. It is our awareness and perspective that shifts.

That is why we turn to our breath in yoga. The breath reminds us of our connection with shri. The breath is at peace. The breath connects us with a higher power, a divine energy that is breathing us. We only need to join in the dance with our awareness.

Finding Freedom in the Present Moment

In 1974 Philippe Petit walked on a wire between the tops of the World Trade Center Towers. For him it was being a poet – writing in the sky. His art was a passion that called for him. He did not seek it or choose it. It chose him.


”Passion is something that knows no bounds”, says Petit. “You cannot calculate every step of your life. Living intensively is difficult.” Philippe did not think of the consequences of walking the wire between the towers.

He did spend 6 years planning the event. He had to figure out how to get the wire and cables to the top of the towers secretly. There was the problem of how to get the wire from the top of one tower to the top of the other tower. Guidelines had to be secured but not in the usual way because the wire was ½ mile above ground. This was the planning that Philippe did. But he never planned the actual walk. He did not think about the fear of walking on a thin wire high above the ground. That part was reserved for complete concentration of living in the moment. He believes you need to leave room for spontaneity, intuition, surprise and improvisation.

He did think that he wanted to do something magnificent. He knew he needed all of his body and mind to do the impossible. There was not one inch of energy to think of anything else.

“Once I am on the wire practicing or performing, I align well the balance of the heart with the balance of the body. You ask me in life, is it lined up? Is it comparable? I would say no. In life my mental balance doesn't exist much because I am too scattered by loving too many things” says Petit. “Well, it’s a mix. I devour life with an impetuous joy, and I’m trying to be happy. But I am sometimes very unhappy, because many things don’t go the way I want, and I am very critical of my own work. So, I am not perpetually happy, but I am a joyful energy of living, and that is with me all the time.

“If I had been walking briskly to the other side, and claim I did it, and go down, and become rich and famous, then it would have been a completely different event. The fact that I stayed there, dialogued with the seagulls, I stayed forty-five minutes, I did eight crossings, and I did all those choreography, laying down, forgetting where I was, makes it obviously some kind of strange theatre in the sky.

“There are moments where things are very delicate, or that the elements are against me, a strong wind or some problem with the installation of the wire, and so I have to be very careful, and I am conscious of what is about to go wrong, but I cannot be fearful that it will be very dangerous for me to be fearful. I have to be fully aware of what’s going on, and fully involved in a way that people on the earth do not carry their life. I have to hold my life in an absolutely intense way.”

The art of living in the moment is where we align with the Divine. It can be free of fear and full of joy. It is not something that lasts. It comes and goes. Like everything in life – there is a pulse, there is change, there are the opposites coming together to define each other. We need to forget to be able to remember. It is the passion in remembering that sets us free.