Oakville Zen Meditation
NOW: The magic of the present moment
Try to answer this question.
How often your mind is in the present moment where your body is and what it is doing?
For example, while you are driving, brushing your teeth, cutting the grass, eating, etc….
The answer: Almost never.
Apart from exceptions such as working, our minds are almost never in the same present moment where our body is, doing something…but rather it is wandering in the past or future.
The vast majority of our activities are routine-based automatic behavior: we are doing x, in the present moment but our mind is doing a in the future or in the past.
Being in two different space-time zones, we are suffering from split personality disorder:
Your body doing X in a material space-time called the Now.
Your mind doing A in an immaterial fictional space-times called past and future.
This is daydreaming.
As long as we are living in immaterial and fictional space-times such as Past and Future, serenity and awakening are impossible to achieve simply because our genuine self is by definition alive only in the present moment, the NOW, and cannot be split into two different entities at once.
The primordial relationship in your life is your relationship with NOW, its content and activities whether they are exciting, boring, stressful, or sad. The media are using the word “Live from” to express the NOW for a good reason.
Only NOW exists and only in the NOW that we exist that is being alive since
the past you is dead, and the future you do not exist.
Is being in the present moment difficult?
Yes. Our ego wants novelty, fun, excitement, pleasure, entertainment, nostalgia for the past, dreams of the future, and many more. Brushing your teeth, being stuck in traffic, and facing a disaster is not very exciting. When the ego-driven mind is sensing boredom or routine or stress in the NOW, it will do everything to jump into the fictional worlds of the past or future. Again: the past-you and future-you are pure illusions, sort of mind-made avatars.
Guilt, regrets, resentment, grievances, sadness, and all forms of non-acceptance, and non-forgiveness are caused by being too often in the past.
Anxiety, worry, stress, envy, expectation, and all form of fear are caused by too much future and not enough present.
Being in the moment is very challenging but it can be done during the day for 1 to 2 min. each time.
What should we do?
By practicing awareness of the present moment as often as possible, you decide:
To have your mind where your body is, and what it is doing such as eating,
walking, etc…
No space-time dissociation no split-personality, no addiction to your fictional
past-me and future-me,
No feelings associated with the past such as regret/guilt or associated with
the future such as worry or expectation. Therefore, these feelings are minimized in
frequency and intensity.
To befriend the Now rather than perceiving it as boring or as an enemy.
Remember this: you are alive only during this present moment, not before, not after,
and it is only during this present moment that you can experience the factual reality of the self, its environment, and of life in general.
This is called Awakening to your illusion-free genuine self.
To be Awake is the opposite of being a day-dreamer wandering non-stop in a self-made
the fictional mental movie made of illusions and delusions, ……….and this is a miracle.
When you are meditating this is exactly what you are doing.
Thank you.
PS: Look at the book “ The Miracle of Now by E Tolle
Go on youtube and enter E Tolle and the Now.
