There’s something inherent in all human beings that longs to feel connected to everyone and everything else. At a deep level, we want to heal our fundamental aloneness.
We crave the flow experience, to be fully absorbed into an activity to the point where the separation between doer and doing evaporates and all notions of time disappear. We want, ultimately, to return to a state of oneness we seem to remember at a psychic level.
On a more immediate level, we want to be in the present moment because the distracted experience of not being present feels unsatisfying. It leaves us feeling empty, unfulfilled, and unreal—like ghosts in our own lives, the whole adventure slipping past us.
Profound regret appears for so many when they realize that they’ve missed out on their life. Not being present is like winning a ticket to the most amazing adventure ever created and choosing not to attend. We want to be present so that we can be in the game while this amazing opportunity is here.
Being in the present moment includes a few fundamental practices. Most it all, it involves experiencing what’s happening in our senses right now. It’s feeling what our body is feeling, inside and out; seeing what we’re seeing, smelling what we’re smelling, tasting what we’re tasting, and hearing what we’re hearing—as it’s happening. It means experiencing the feelings and sensations through our body and not our mind’s interpretation of them.
Being present means not thinking about our past, nor projecting our future. It means paying attention to this moment as it’s arising through our senses without judgment or commentary.
While being present means not being engaged in thinking, it’s important to mention that being present doesn’t require the absence of thought. Being in the present moment doesn’t mean the mind stops producing thoughts, and thoughts in and of themselves are not a problem for presence.
Thoughts happen, they can keep coming no matter how present we are. To be present with thoughts involves being aware of the fact that thoughts are appearing, but (and here’s the big but) without identifying with those thoughts. In other words, noticing the presence of thoughts without getting involved in their stories, content, or going down the rabbit hole into which they beckon.
Being in the present moment means directly experiencing what’s arising in the body, in the senses, which also includes paying attention to what’s happening in the mind.
Simultaneously, living in the present moment involves experiencing whatever’s happening right now without an agenda for where it needs to lead us. Being present is turning our attention to right now without trying to build this moment into a desired outcome.
Many of us, myself included, struggle with this more subtle aspect of presence. Deep within us, there exists a drive to make something with our moments, to move our life in a positive direction that will create what we want. As we’re living this moment, a part of us, sometimes unconsciously, considers the present a stepping stone in the larger path of our life. We live in a linear frame, with the present moment inextricably linked to an imagined future.
This linear frame emits a subtle, sometimes imperceptible energy that keeps us at a slight distance from life. It keeps us doing something with life, making something out of it that will benefit us. With our ‘now’ perpetually linked to a future, we can’t trust that it’s safe to truly let go and surrender entirely into this moment, as its own destination.
To be fully present is to relate to each now as a vertical eternity, a moment complete and whole, a hologram of everything. It is to release the idea of now as an usher between the past and future.
To live with profound presence is to trust that life will be enough and we will be enough if we simply show up for it one moment at a time. It’s to believe that, like a necklace of pearls, life can be well-lived as a series of present moments strung together. The shift into this sort of presence is about letting go of the idea that we are the directors of our life and we need to use it to achieve a particular agenda.
When we pay attention to our senses without judgment, interpretation, or agenda, and refrain from engaging in thinking, we start to experience—at a gut, heart, and mind level—that simply taking care of our now is the most skillful and successful means for taking care of our future and ending up where we want. It’s much easier than we’re conditioned to believe.
