Being More Present

So many people these days are telling me they need to be more present. They need to be in the now moment. They want to be grounded in the present moment. I tell them something that often times surprises them. You are present. You are the very definition of presence. The problem is that we have become experts at leaving presence.

The key to staying present is so simple it is absurd. Pay attention! When we pay attention, we are present. We are here. We experience now. So how is it we stop paying attention to now? That is the simple part – we think. When we are thinking, we can only be thinking of the remembered past or the imagined future. So by definition, thinking takes us away from presence. So when we go up in our heads and start believing in and identifying with our thoughts we go away. It is just that simple.

Of course there is a terrible price that we pay and that is suffering. For when we go into our heads, one thought leads to the next. Soon when are into a story then into drama. This results in feeling like hell inside. We want to get out of hell, so we struggle. We react, we fight, and we beg God to end our suffering. We turn to drugs and alcohol. We want a different sex partner. We desperately rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic in an effort to change our internal state. None of this was necessary if we had only stayed present.

Thinking is this terrible compulsion we have to take the peace of the present moment and turn it into an intolerable experience. Such is the human condition. Oh, and by the way, we are going to turn it into an intolerable experience for those closest to us also.

Try this experiment for a moment. Stay present and search for the past. Where is the past? Is it in your current experience? What were you doing five minutes ago? Is that in your current experience? No, of course not. Five minutes ago is a function of your head. Inside your head is this psychological experience we call the remembered past. It doesn’t exist in the present moment.

Now staying present, try to find the future? Look around. Do you see the future? Did you know that in the now there never is a future? The future literally and figuratively never happens. Now is the only thing that ever happens. Try as you might, you can only experience the past or the future in your head. Therefore it is not real!

In our current experience, there seem to be what we call memories of the past. Who cares about them? The present is so overwhelming, such a perfect Divine expression, who would ever want to waste the present by recreating the past in their head? The same thing with the future. The imagined future is a place of fear and stress. Who wants to leave “the peace that passes all understanding” to start speculating about an uncertain future? Does anticipation affect the future? It gives us the illusion of control. But ultimately we have no real control. It is the trick of the ego-mind to think so, and yet it grips us, moment by moment.

The past and the future do not exist in the present. But there is something wonderful that does. It is the Presence of Life. The Truth of what we have always been looking for. The fulfillment that was supposed to be just around the corner is here now, if we will only look now. Want to be more present? Pay very close attention to what is. Marvel at its beauty and perfection with all of its adventure, and pathos, and pain, and joy. Life might just turn out to be the heaven you were longing for.