Being in the Moment

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I’ve just read something in two or three sources including ‘A Course in Miracles’ and ‘Four Thousand Weeks’ and at least one other before those.

They are all about ‘living in the moment’. Now you need to concentrate – read this slowly!

For me they ‘were’ – they are now in my past.

For them they exist but as inanimate items it’s all they can do.

For you they (if they’re not already in your past) are in the ‘future’, or more exactly your future as you’ve not encountered them yet.

This is just an example. The thing is we spend most or in some cases all of our lifespan living not in the ‘now’ but in the past. Everything we know is what has ‘gone before’. Even as you read this, the last sentences – and this one – are past and gone.

They are in the trail, the timeline you leave behind, which, like a blockchain, cannot be undone, unravelled, changed or rebuilt.

The next sentence you read in your ‘now’ is already in my past, and as you read each word it’s done, ‘been and gone’ – in the past and will never recur even if I write an ‘identical’ sentence now. It’s still not the same thing and now the repeat is past as well.

Where am I? Where are you? Now. In the past. When I wrote it I was ‘here’ but now I’m somewhere else – further down the page. I was ‘there’ but in terms of my lifespan – and I haven’t physically moved other than moving the pencil on the page, I am now ‘here’.

But you say, you’re in the same place, how is this different?

The ‘energy’ has changed. All the atoms, electrons and so on of which everything is composed have ‘moved’.

Everything is energy in eternal vibration. Everything in the Universe is changing by an amount beyond understanding during every tiniest fraction of our lifespans.

(By the way, you may have noticed I’m using the term ‘lifespan’ instead of ‘time’. The latter doesn’t exist, but lifespan does, and we all have one)

For most of it we are focussed on three ideas.

Where we’ve come from and who we are as a result, where we are going and who we want to become, and in a tiny minority (if at all) where and who we are right now.

Trouble is, ‘now’ has just ‘gone’. ‘Then’ the future, is happening continually and ‘now’ is unbelievably transient.

But now is where and who we are really, in reality, in truth, but what’s happened (note past tense) is we’ve been trained or ‘educated’ one way and another to view where we are now first in terms of the past, and then the future. Where we’ve been, and where we’re going.

We’re not encouraged to just stop. To sit and ‘watch’ for a moment and really ‘be’ in ourselves.

“Stop daydreaming and pay attention” the teacher would say, but just sitting, watching and indulging in the present moment – or series of moments – is something we must do for a myriad of reasons.

There are ‘methods’ people have come up with such as meditation and mindfulness, but we don’t need to be particularly ‘aware’ just to watch, listen, smell, feel and ‘be’ in the moment.

(Just don’t try it while you’re driving!)

It does need a bit of discipline to shut out the future and past with thoughts like “what does this mean?” but it can be done and is the most beneficial activity you can do even if only for a few moments each day.