Living In The Moment {A guide to recreating your reality}

What is the biggest difference between someone living in 2009 and 1909? Distractions.

Everywhere we look there is something trying to grab our attention. Whether it be a pop-up ad, a call on our cell phones, ipods, bills, credit offers, or the news telling us how screwed the world is. The fact is we are bombarded every single day of our lives. Our minds are constantly grabbing on to new thoughts and darting off in different directions, not even aware of how unconscious we are.

This has done a number on the human mind. One hundred years ago you had your job and your family. Things were simple and the mind had more time to enjoy what was happening in the moment. Kids would go outside and enjoy nature. Now they go on 4 hour halo binges in the basement.

Whats is being taken away from us with all of these distractions is Mindfulness. We have forgotten how to live in the moment and in doing so, we have created a number of new problems for ourselves.

Mindfulness is the most important thing we can strive to achieve in our lifetimes, and I will offer a few tips for working on this achievement.

Word of Warning
Striving to achieve mindfulness creates an interesting paradox. You can not strive to be mindful for its rewards, as that puts you in the future, rather you have to trust that your rewards will come. You must let go and stop judging and labeling every event in your life, because in the long run, you never know what is good or bad for you.

Tip #1. Realize the you are not your thoughts.
Becoming mindful is not a switch you can flip. It takes work, like going to school to study something. You have to focus on being mindful as much as you possibly can. Believe me it can be difficult. I have been practicing this for almost 2 years now and I am lucky if i am mindful for an hour a day. I started with minutes. The first trick it the hardest to realize, but once you do, you are freed from the prison that is your mind.

We are taught that we are the thoughts that zoom through your mind every 3 seconds. We judge ourselves based on these random thoughts that occupy our minds. Example: Your co-worker gets fired and your first thought is, how can this benefit me? You will look back and judge your self and think, what a crappy person I am for thinking that. Let me tell you that you are not your thoughts.

Your higher self resides above the computer like brain and it is your true self. Take time to ponder the difference between the two. The goal is to be able to rise above your thoughts and observe them as you would observe a news feed on your computer. They are not you. Think of them as bubbles in the ocean rising up. You can choose to latch on to these bubbles and float to the top (unconsciousness), or let them float on by and have a little laugh at how silly they are.

To be continued...

[edit on 31-3-2009 by bringthelight]

A great quote I found on the benefits of being mindful.

"Mindful people are happier, more exuberant, more empathetic, and more secure. They have higher self-esteem and are more accepting of their own weaknesses. Anchoring awareness in the here and now reduces the kinds of impulsivity and reactivity that underlie depression, binge eating, and attention problems. Mindful people can hear negative feedback without feeling threatened. They fight less with their romantic partners and are more accommodating and less defensive. As a result, mindful couples have more satisfying relationships."

Thanks for brigging up this subject, for it is one of my favorite topics.
I would like to go a little further by explaining the origins of thoughts.

Starting with the concept that we are multidimensional, thoughts originate from the higher mental plane (your cosmic self). Thoughts are a form of light energy that is sent to the lower mental body (mind). But before it reaches the mind, it is colored by the astral world (manipulated). The reason is to test us in our emotivity.

So, we cannot take our thoughts seriously because they are manipulated. True thoughts, that are not manipulated, are direct telepathy with your cosmic self.

It is true that in 2009, there is more distraction for the mind. Part of the reason is to keep us in ignorance of the true nature of the self. Technology is a good thing, but we need to be conscious of the effects on our daily lives.

Tip #2. Live in the now...Breathe.

Its funny how the most repeated phrases of all time can have so much more meaning than you originally think. How many times have you heard, "ok just relax and take a deep breath." Or for the boy in class who had the anger problem, "ok Johnny, take deep breaths and count to ten!"

I have heard phrases my whole life and just realized how true they are and why they have been repeated since the dawn of time. Putting your awareness on your breath brings you into the now.

This is an easy tip that anyone can do at any time. It will help bring you into the moment and make you realize how unconsciously you have been living your life. The best time for me to do this is when I am driving. I am nervous im not going to get somewhere on time or worrying about what im going to do when i get there. To break the unconscious stream of thought I put my awareness on my belly. I realize how tense it is. My stomach muscles are all constricted and I am taking short quick breaths. This is not good. Short quick breaths are creating stress and tension and doing all sorts of bad things to my body that i dont even know about. Stress is linked to so many illnesses so we do not want to create it for ourselves.

Pay attention to how you are breathing and then give yourself permission to let go. That silly phrase you have been hearing your whole life "just breathe," is more significant and true than you have ever imagined. It is such a powerful tool you can use to start becoming aware. Even if you catch yourself once a day...don't judge it, it is progress and you should be thankful for it.

TBC...

reply to post by teklordz


Thank you for your contribution. You bring up an interesting point about thoughts being manipulated. Please feel free to add any thoughts to this discussion.

"Technology is a good thing, but we need to be conscious of the effects on our daily lives. "

...Well said

[edit on 31-3-2009 by bringthelight]

Another great quote on meditation/mindfulness. I love the puppy training analogy.

"For some, [the] task of coming back a thousand or ten thousand times in meditation may seem boring or even of questionable importance. But how many times have we gone away from the reality of our life?--perhaps a million or ten million times! If we wish to awaken, we have to find our way back here with our full being, our full attention. . . In this way, meditation is very much like training a puppy. You put the puppy down and say, "Stay." Does the puppy listen? It gets up and runs away. You sit the puppy back down again. "Stay." And the puppy runs away over and over again. Sometimes the puppy jumps up, runs over and pees in the corner, or makes some other mess. Our minds are much the same as the puppy, only they create even bigger messes. In training the mind, or the puppy, we have to start over and over again."--Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart

...Dont get discouraged. You dont yell at the puppy when he wanders because he does not know any better!

[edit on 31-3-2009 by bringthelight]

Tip #3. Forget about the future and start savoring the present.

We miss so much in our everyday lives because we are distracted. Example; We finally take that vacation we have been so excited about and when we get there we worry about going back to work in 3 days and how the vacation is almost over!
We drive ourselves nuts! Not living in the moment takes away the true beauty of life. We are missing things that are happening right in front of our faces because we are thinking about the future/past.

We need to start savoring. Savoring is living in the moment at its finest. It can be done with any experience or task. Think doing the dishes sucks right? Try experiencing it or some other mundane task as the first time you have ever done it. Feel the sensation of the warm soapy water coming into contact with your hands and pay attention to every circle you make with the sponge. Take in all the smells and admire the sparkling plates when your done. Be aware of nothing but the task at hand and it no longer becomes a chore. Life is no longer a chore when you can literally enjoy everything for the experience that it is. It is truly amazing to think of how our sensory experience came to be.

Start savoring your food! It is the American way to eat like Homer Simpson and scarf everything down as quick as possible. I used to do it! Take more time to taste and enjoy every bite. Your senses will start to come alive and you will experience everything as a baby does, trying things out for the first time. We wonder why kids are happy all the time. They have the ability to live in the moment.

Thinking about events in the past and labeling them as bad things and worrying about events in the future leaves with a bland existence. We dont experience life as it was meant to be. Get out of your own head and live!

Ahhh... people like you remind of why i even care about humanity in the first place. Read Eckharte Toll much?

Living in the moment is the key to hapiness, to joy, to peace, to god.

Humans have the tendancy to live according to the past. In fact, they base their entire life on events from the past. If you live your life in the present of your conscience, you start to liberate yourself from domination.
Freedom of the mind is the ultimate goal for the human race. To achieve this, you cannot be manipulated in any way or be influenced in any way.
This is by no means easy, for it requires alot of practice.
To start with, you need to be aware of the thoughts you receive. We do not need to analyse them in depth, but just be aware of the game being played on your mind.
Awareness is the first step towards consciousness. The more conscious you get, the less influence and manipulation you're subjected to.
When full consciousness is achieved, your experience in the physical realm is over, and you move on to other spheres of evolution.

Nice thread OP!
Starred and Flagged =)

And I like what Teklordz said- "freedom of the mind is the ultimate goal for the human race".

Tip #4. Accept your emotions for what they are an move on.

When we have negative emotions we tend to fight them. Say for example you lose someone close to you and you are heartbroken. Instead of fighting that emotion and causing more pain and sadness in doing so, accept that it is a perfectly normal reaction. Observe whats going on in your body without judging. Accept that feeling sad is normal and focus on something else. Putting up a wall only delays the process of healing.

Thanks for this thread bringthelight. I needed to read it. I've been suffering from depression for the past few years because I'm constantly worrying and constantly feel guilty about the past and the future. I'm hardly ever in the present and when I am I feel lost and scared.

I've messed up so many things in life, and at university and communicating with other people because I haven't been myself at all in a new country. I've tried counselling, taking medication etc. Everybody I talk to says I need to take medication because it's a chemical imbalance in my brain. Furthermore, they add insult to injury by telling me that since I'm a scientist/biochemist I should be agreeing with them.

Even though I'm in a very bad way, hated myself, thought of suicide for a very long time, I am still hopeful that I can come out of this myself.
I enjoyed reading your post very much because it reminded me of how I used to be before i had depression. I used to be a very peaceful person and it was precisely because I focussed on and enjoyed the present moments and took each moment of my life as something new. I would never worry or feel bad about the past or future. I've lost the ability to do that anymore.

I guess looking back, the key to beginning your journey to awareness is realizing how unaware you are throughout the day. It hit me like a ton of bricks one day and you can check out the thread I wrote about it HERE.

Its like when you read an entire page of a book and realize that you were so lost in thought that you dont have a clue what you just read. We do this on a subtler level in our everyday lives. We are reacting to situations based on how we reacted in the past. Our subconscious minds are taking over and living our lives for us.

This fact must be realized because I cant explain it to you. It has to hit you like a ton of bricks, I cant just tell you in a thread. By practicing watching your breath you will realize how unconscious we actually are ALL DAY. By doing so you will want to devote more time and attention to becoming a mindful person. There is no turning back once you have this realization!

Conscious living. Not to live from our unconscious programming. This is also one way to counteract MC and NLP, and take our power back. And it can literally transform relationships with others. Starred and flagged. This is a very good thread. Thank you.

reply to post by odi_gid_niria


Realizing that you haven't been living in the moment is the first step. What you have done in the past means NOTHING. It doesn't exist. Whats amazing about our minds is we have the ability to completely reset. You have realized that you were more peaceful and in the moment at a certain time and the only thing holding you back, is thinking you don't have the ability to get back there.

Let me tell you right now, you can always come back to the present moment. Its literally all we have. Any time you have these feelings of anxiety brought on by dwelling in the past, observe your belly and breathe. You are putting your energy and thoughts into an illusion. Breathe deep and let it all fade away. Its not easy and it takes practice, but things will start to click and you will be amazed at some of the epiphanies and revelations you will have.

If you have any more questions or would like to talk to me privately, u2u me and I would be glad to help

Yes I believe you're right but it's difficult for me to feel like I do have the ability to do that.

I know this sounds silly but my depression is characterized by fearing what other people think and may do in the future to me based on my past. I feel highly threatened by others constantly.

Even if I forgot about everything that I've done in the past and thought that my mistakes meant nothing, other people won't. So I feel I have to hang on to the past in case someone else is still judging me based on it. It's almost like a control issue and worrying about what other people think has become such a major problem for me.. it's truly a sickness of the mind.

I obviously don't want to be this way. It's difficult to explain though. I'm not even able to judge my mistakes properly because I feel overly guilty about every single thing I do. So everything's out of proportion in my head and this way of thinking and worrying continues the cycle of making mistakes in the present as well.

reply to post by odi_gid_niria


Do you have a support group? Solitude is not good for depression. Try to connect with nature. Physical exercise also seems to help.

I'm not a doc. Just my 2 cents.

Best of luck!

N

This reminds me of something that the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) once said,

"Be mindful of Allah, and Allah will protect you. Be mindful of Allah, and you will find Him in front of you. If you (have need to) ask, ask of Allah; and if you seek help, seek help from Allah. Know that even if the Nation (or the whole community) were to gather together to benefit you with something, they would not benefit you with anything except that which Allah has already recorded for you, and that if they gather together to harm you with something, they would not be able to harm you with anything except that which Allah has already recorded against you. The pens have been lifted and the pages have dried."

It is also recorded that he once said,

"Be mindful of Allah, you will find Him before you. Get to know Allah in prosperity and He will know you in adversity. Know that what has passed you by was not going to befall you; and that what has befallen you was not going to pass you by. And know that victory comes with patience, relief with affliction, and ease with hardship."

Reply to odi_gid_niria

I guess the only advise i can offer you is that people tend to let things go a lot quicker than you think. Any harm done to someone can usually be undone by a kind gesture. If you really feel that strongly about it and can't let go, reach out to the people you wronged. Even if its an email with a sincerely written apology. It will help you let go and you would be surprised at how forgiving people can be. Good luck, and I will send some reiki your way if you wish.

[edit on 31-3-2009 by bringthelight]

S & F
Great post and one I think everyone should read. Not just for the information but maybe to awaken themselves to something more than the daily humdum.

Keep up the good work!