Presence Of Mind
Here is Now. If you’re not here, your mind is running the show, and I can’t think of something more damaging to the possibilities of happiness and freedom each of us have. As I spoke in my previous post, the simplicity of wisdom often prevents us from accepting it, and even in the face of logic, the idea of being present and paying attention to our bodies and surroundings and thoughts and feelings is one that meets a lot of resistance.
The future only exists as a fabrication, you project yourself forward, assuming such a time will come to pass, but does it? There is Now, and then when you get to that future time it’ll still be Now. The same can be said of the past, it exists because we think it, project our mind into it, and bring the memories back into the present moment, into the Now. It is quite possible to forget the past entirely if we live in the Now, and without its influence life becomes a lot smoother and a lot lighter.
The biggest argument against this is that future ideas are a reality. You have a job, and tomorrow you’ll have to go it, or you have a bill to pay in a few days, so you’ll have to sort the money for then. You’ll have to eat later, drink later, and so plan things accordingly so you have the supplies. But when you think of these things, you are bringing them into the present moment. This brings stress in most cases, because being future figments there is no hope of achieving them in the Now you have brought them to. In fact, you can never do more than one thing at a time, never be anywhere but in the Now, so bringing multiple illusions back with you serves only to clutter the moment into an impossibly stressful situation. Imagine if a massage therapist decided to book 5 different people in for the same time. The massage therapist is only one man (or woman), so naturally they can only massage one person in that time period, and the rest will meet with disappointment and there’ll be a lot of extra work to be done later on cleaning up the mess of the inconvenience for everyone. Yet this is exactly what we do when we think of all the things we think we have to do in the future instead of simply dealing with whatever is in front of us in the Now.
There’s an element of faith in this when viewed from the linear mind - it says “if I don’t think of those future things now, how will I know to do them?” And I tell you this. You will know when to do them when the time is right, and not before. By being keenly in the Now, you can see what is to be done at that time clearly, in the same way that you can see to make a turn in your car when you are at the junction, but not a mile down the road beforehand. In fact, you could see how counterproductive thinking about making that turn would be when you’ve got a lot of other turns before you even get there.
The arguments for Nowness, for attention and presence, then, are there to see. It isn’t easy, because it takes a commitment to bring attention back to Now each time it wanders, when often people want to avoid what is happening Now as it is unpleasant to them in some way. But the good news is that it is completely in your power, it’s your attention you are focusing after all.
So: Here, or Anywhere But Here, the choice is yours. I know which I choose.