Most of you will agree that we think too much and it steals away our happiness and makes us more stressed and anxious. We understand this but somehow can’t get out of it. It is so ingrained in us that thinking too much comes naturally to us. Our thinking is not about the present but either the past or the future.
I once went to the nearby garden with my niece. I suddenly heard my niece shouting ‘see there, an aeroplane’. This snapped me out of what I was thinking. I realised that I had reached the park, but I was so engrossed i my thoughts that I did not even notice that I came from my home to the park. I was mentally miles away floating in my thoughts. I realised that while I was somewhere else but my niece was enjoying the present moment in the park, running after the butterfly, enjoying the flowers and sliding down the slide. This is the problem will all of us, we are everywhere except where we should be- the present.
Life is happening now.
As soon as we wake up, the thought machine gets activated. Starting from going to the bathroom, to catching up with the news on TV, getting ready and gulping down the breakfast, we do all these activity as a robot but our mind is seldom present. We don’t savour the taste of the breakfast or see the sunlight coming through the window or the sound of any bird chirping outside. We are too busy for these things. As a machine we will go to our workplace, do our job, and return tired thinking about the coming weekend and what to do. The thing that we are missing in our lives is me. Rest all and sundry are taken care of by us.
The past and the present only exist in our mind, the past has stopped being a reality and the future is yet to be the reality. These two things are devoid of any reality and only exist in our head. So you are basically doing everything except living. The days, weeks, months and years are passing by and the precious present moment is lost due to the lack of our awareness. And then a time comes when we think how quickly time passed and we did not even notice it. We may then feel bad about the lost time but sadly the process is irreversible, so we lament even more. We then decide to enjoy our life fully but again we forget about it after a few days and repeat the mistakes again.
The more we are in the present moment the more we are at peace with us, the more we are calm and happy and alive. It is because the present moment is without any anxiety or fear about the past and the future. So when are living in the present, contentment comes automatically. We don’t have to make any conscious effort for it.
The mind can be at a place at one time. Though we think that so many things are clogging our mind but actually when we are thinking one thing we are not thinking about anything else. We may think many things one after another but never can we think two things simultaneously. We need to be mindful about the present moment. It means all our sensations should be active in taking in the present moment within us.
When we are walking our eyes should see all that is around us, our ears should be listening to the sounds around us, our nose should smell the things around us, and our skin should be feeling the breeze blowing or the sensation of our foot touching the ground, our tongue should be focused on tasting any food or drink you are having. If we are able to control our senses to be in the present then the mind will automatically be in the present. It will not get the opportunity to wander in the past or the present. This is mindfulness. The next stage of it is the meditation where we focus on the breadth. We keep ourselves bound to the present by focusing on the breadth, the feeling of it going in and out- as if it is saying that we have arrived in the right place- the present, our real home.
