The present moment
And when you can make time disappear, you can crash the fear of death.
Ok, easy to say, difficult to achieve…
Being present needs will, intention, preposition, and attention.
Attention is the tool to manage alertness on the present moment. When you start paying attention whatever was at the edge of awareness becomes just awareness.
We live in the present moment anyway but by paying attention we just change the quality of our experience.
Find something in your body. The sensation of gravity, for instance, the sensation of your own weight. While I am writing these lines I focus on my weight and become aware that my body has a weight and a bit of pain even when seated. (We always experience pain in our life, even by simply sitting, but we just do not feel it because we are not focused)
By practicing, more information will rise to consciousness that is already inside us and slowly our awareness will expand.
The real process of moving our attention into the Now makes all the difference, because there is an alertness.
This alertness has tension but not the high tension provoked by stress where we cannot act wisely. There is a high alertness but a slow tension and this is the combination that can unlock our path towards freedom.
On that level you function differently.
With high tension you become dysfunctional and collapse even when you have great alertness.
When you step in the Now your mind stops its incessant stream of thinking so your attention is not imprisoned by your thoughts. Vastness and spaciousness arise. In that space, you are conscious and alert. There is a difference between being alert in front of a danger for instance, looking alert and living in alertness. Our tuned- in presence is all that’s needed.
You can never feel bored in the present moment. It has an aliveness in its stillness and it’s where presence emerges. And assertiveness. Being in high awareness BUT in low tension is a quality that provides assertiveness and strength.
If we connect to the Now we will less and less need to correct things. Enter this state of stillness, silence your thoughts and be as much present as you can. Witness what is actually happening in the present moment, step out of your roles and just pay attention. The truth is that the self-concept is an image we create mentally. By practicing attention and focus we can change what we perceive ourselves to be.
When we live into the Now, we become the observer of our Self and by taking a conscious distance from the role we have adopted throughout our lives, we experience our true selves and realize we are not our thoughts, our emotions, our perceptions. We do not have a life, we are our life. We are Life itself. We do not feel love. We are Love. In that space, we experience our real self and we sense “I am”.
As observers, we keep a distance from the observed object and we witness easily whatever behavioral mechanisms we have adopted.
By being aware of the ability to observe with full attention, we can change whatever is not useful in our behavior and therefore instead of a repetitive machine we can become a free and independent human that acts with clarity and perseverance, with purposefulness, tenacity and determination.