Ideas of mindfulness, presence and being in the ‘now’ are making their way into our collective consciousness. These are all ways of saying that, in becoming deeply connected to this moment in time, we can be transported to a place that is not of time, not of this material world, a timeless dimension of reality, the eternal Now.
This eternal realm can only be entered in the presenting moment but our thoughts make sure that the doors to this perception remain firmly closed.Thinking keeps us locked into the mind instead of into our present experience. Being lost in thought is the way the ego shuts us off from our true nature. It slams us behind an ego wall to face a life sentence of the mindless repetition of largely useless thoughts; illusory thoughts in the illusory world of a prison in which we have voluntarily incarcerated ourselves. Mental babble is not real. The only reality is that which is presenting itself to you in every moment of your life. So WAKE UP to it!
Do you see that living in the mind is living in the past? The only true thing we can think about the past is that it is not here. To think about it at all is therefore to think of illusions and to upset old emotions. When we picture the past or anticipate the future, the mind is actually closed, asleep to anything real. While you are lost in the mind, time-travelling between regrets of the past and fears for the future, you are not actually alive, you are just replaying old mind games and feeling old feelings. You are living an inauthentic life dominated by an ego mind, a relic of the past. You are not free to even notice, never mind experience the reality of life because you are coming from this false sense of self.
At your deepest level of being you might be described as Consciousness itself but you have blinded yourself to this knowledge by becoming hijacked and imprisoned by this false self. It has coiled itself around you like a snake, taking what was infinite and making it smaller and smaller, more and more constricted. And when this snake has you in its vice-like grip it then hypnotises you into believing that you are separate. It may tell you that you are free, because we’re always told we should be grateful for our freedoms, but you are not free. The ego snake has you in its clutches, whispering warning signs in your ear about how unsafe the world is, how you must be in control, how there is nothing to love and everything to fear – and so you feel anxious.
Fear is the opposite of love. When we release fear, love automatically begins to shine in us. It is madness to think your thoughts have any power over you, unless you let them. Thinking is no more than a tiny aspect of the totality of Consciousness, the totality of who you really are. So stop letting thinking run your life. All you have to do is to be vigilant for ego thoughts and realise that you have given your thoughts all the meaning they have for you. When the ego thought arises, choose again. Choose to come out of your head and into the now moment of your life. Choose love, not fear. There is beauty in living in the here-and-now where there is no illusory past or future. And from an intuitive sense of Being, way beyond the ego mind, come joy and bliss:
““In the moment, there is nothing to fear – no memories, no anxieties. And as I rest in the moment, a good feeling settles on me, then joy, then bliss” ”
Presence Exercise
Think of a flower, a tree, a mountain, a river; they are all simply here, being present. You can be too. All you need do is sink into whatever is arising in your body and placing all your attention there, with no thought.
Within this background of presence, these are the steps to take. Let’s use an example of a common negative emotion, anxiety. Low-level anxiety plagues many people today.
1. Whenever you experience anxiety, become very present with it, settle in to it. Stay OUT of your head, do not use language or images, just fully feel it in your body.
2. Feel, acknowledge and confess the feeling. Let it reveal itself. What are you really anxious about? If you can identify it, acknowledge it, let it express, it dissolves very quickly. Confess it out loud to God or to anything in your environment, even if it’s a plant on your windowsill. Saying things aloud helps you understand them and lets them begin to wash through you.