Dance with the Present Moment and Experience Real Life

“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life. ― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

In my life, as I try to grasp the present, I’ve found that many triggers jolt us away from the Now.

The triggers are omnipresent, forever invading. We don’t even notice them. Life can quickly become one trigger after another, dragging us away from what life was supposed to be.

Then, when real life happens, we tend to see life itself as a distraction. When really, we couldn’t be more wrong. The things we focused on were typically not real life at all. And the things that distracted us were real life, calling to us.

Real life was the rare human moment that someone wanted to share with us. But when it finally happened, we failed to realize it and shrugged it off.

It was the birds singing, but we were too busy to notice. It was the stranger on the street who was having a bad day and needed help. Real life was the sunrise, sunset, and the stars above. Or the face of your loved one that you hadn’t bothered to truly look at.

But when these things happened, we thought they were the distraction, not real life itself.

The distractions from real life were in the job that we do, where if we ceased to exist, someone else would fill the slot within 48 hours. It was the negative and judgmental words that we yell at ourselves in our minds. It was the worries about the stock market going up or down. It was the concern over the most negative news story of the day.

We thought we were living real life in these times, but we were not in the present moment here. Instead, we were upset about the past or worried about the future or focused on our made-up problems. Or perhaps, we were just distracted by nonsense.

As we become so-called mature and modern adults, we get to a point where whatever it is pulling us into the Now becomes the thing that we wish to avoid. The Now falls into the background. We somehow manage to escape the unescapable.

Adults have escaped from the present as if it were a disaster to be averted. But we weren’t meant to escape the Now. It’s like trying to outrun your shadow. Humans today are disjointed from their own shadow, living in a world of illusion when they become disconnected from the Now.

So why do we seek to escape it if this cannot be done?

The present may be too powerful for us to handle. It is a zone where anything could happen. The plans you had may work, or they may come crashing down. Your feelings may be validated or dismissed. A revolutionary idea may help you find success, cause you to have a massive failure or even both.

But rather than give in to the power of the present moment, we often wish to take power back for ourselves.

Our inflated egos make us want to hold on to the need to control, plan, achieve, and predict.

Some mysterious Now couldn’t possibly be at the reins of this life – no, we mortal and temporal humans feel that we are the ones in power. This is the illusion that we work on maintaining all our lives. Our lives become not life but rather the illusion of one.

I was once driving to work, and I saw a disheveled man with a chaotic, long beard. He was swaying his hands almost like a musical conductor. He seemed to be guiding traffic and buses to go where they were going. This man did not work for the city. He had a wild smile as if he was having the time of his life. Somehow, I understood what was happening. In this man’s mind, he was controlling the universe. He directed the traffic, the pedestrians, and perhaps even the animals. In his mind, he had orchestrated it all.

But of course, they were all doing what they wanted to do, and he was pretending to have made it happen that way. He felt the power and the control but had none.

Sometimes, that feels like the analogy for what humanity has become. We insist on maintaining control over that which is actually out of our hands. We are happy to take the credit when it works in our favor, but any time something goes wrong, it was out of our hands.

Yet, just maybe, things were always out of our hands. I can’t force my heart to beat, but it continues to happen. Until it doesn’t. And when it doesn’t, it’s because it was never in my control, to begin with.

Maybe we are trying to control a universe that is actually out of our hands.

We find it difficult to let the Now be whatever it will be, to give us whatever it has to give, or to take from us whatever it wishes to take. And so, every day, we are resisting that present moment, as we have made it into the enemy.

We are not in the present moment because we have made it the enemy of our lives. We have succumbed to the triggers all around us.

Someone could spend a lifetime documenting these triggers that lead us away from the present, away from the Now.

When we have scheduled our lives away, we have resisted the present moment.

When we have plans and perceive nothing beyond them, we have resisted the present moment.

When we convince ourselves that we are failures and get stuck in self-pity, we have resisted the present moment.

When we have rejected a chance occurrence just because we did not expect it, we have resisted the present moment.

When we have labeled with language that which words cannot confine, we have resisted the present moment.

When we needed the security of knowing the outcomes of everything we may do, we have resisted the present moment.

When we have insisted on living by the patterns we have always lived by, we have resisted the present moment.

When we have denied our wild, spontaneous, and free side, we have resisted the present moment.

When we have failed to see the beauty in the beautiful, the sadness in the sad, and the wonder in the wonderful, we have resisted the present moment.

When we have gotten lost in thoughts rather than lost in the experience that is life, we have resisted the present moment.

When we have been convinced by false thoughts and ideas that do not stand up to reality, we have resisted the present moment.

When we have confused our temporary selves, emotions, and problems with being more important than the universe, we have resisted the present moment.

We do these things. I do them, you do them, and perhaps everyone I have ever known does them.

Seeing these triggers for what they are can take us even further away from the present, strangely enough. In seeing them, we start to notice them, label them, think about them, and interpret them, and all of this takes us further away from life.

But if we give ourselves to the Now, then there is nothing left to resist, and we become a part of that Now.

We don’t need to put much effort into this, as effort often works against the now. Going with the tides of now is effortless, but because we have resisted this for so long, it may appear to take effort to get there.

The Now is happening to us, whether or not we are ready to take it in and accept that. The power is more in the present than it is in us. We are predicting it, reacting to it, and explaining it, but are we experiencing it fully and living it? That is another matter.

Rather than grasping at the present, which cannot be grasped, it makes more sense to dance with it. We can focus on becoming aware and in sync with real life and strive to find a piece of that now. Even if we can’t have all of it, we can find some of it for ourselves.

The alternative is to live a life outside of the now. What kind of life is that?

Living longer is a focus for many, but it doesn’t mean much if we didn’t actually live those years. What percent of our lives took place in sync with the Now? That may be a more interesting metric to shoot for.

I’m not sure that being in the present is a skill or practice. It may be as simple as letting go of our ego, of our need to control and direct this thing called life. Rather than living the illusion of life, we can let it go and truly live.

Humans do have great power. But how great is that power when our lives are temporary, and every loved one will die? How great is it when everything built will fall, most of our predictions are wrong, and much of our lives occur in the imaginary world of ideas?

Our true power was in our ability to acknowledge the power of the present and to become one with it.

Join me in a never-ending dance with the present moment. That is the goal of this life if there ever was one.

If you are interested in learning more about the Present Moment, you may wish to read 7 Thoughts to Live Your Life By: A Guide to the Happy, Peaceful, & Meaningful Life.

“I am Better Than You”

The thought that “I am Better than You” may be one of the most harmful thoughts ever produced in all of society, yet it is often seen as quite benign or even as a good and healthy thought to have. For many people, they may view it as their right to think this thought every day.

I will admit that I have been guilty of thinking this thought at times. I am well educated, and I think education is highly important. So it is tempting if I meet someone who did not go to college to think that I am better.

Yet, in reality, I just happened to be born into a family where a college education was highly valued. Since I was 8 years old, I knew that I would go to college – it was never a question. Another 8-year-old in my neighborhood perhaps had never even heard the word “college,” as his parents may not have found higher education to be especially important. Another 8-year-old in a less fortunate country was perhaps working full time to help his family survive, and the idea of college would be completely foreign to him.

There is not a good reason to convince ourselves that we are better than others. Often, we just had different circumstances and different opportunities.

A humbling thought I sometimes have is that if I had been born exactly in someone else’s position, meaning to another mother and father, in the same context as someone else, then I would be that other person. We like to focus on our self-control and our ability to do what we want, but if you were born in an environment without proper nutrition, education, healthy mindsets, good role models, and so on, then why would you be the 1 in a million statistic that performs well in life?

Contrariwise, if everything in your life were moving you toward love, wisdom, and success, with good parents and good school systems, and positive nurturing family and friends, what type of person could fail to live a fruitful life in this case? If everything were aligning you toward being a good and successful person, then to fail horribly in life would perhaps make you quite the unusual statistic.

With this type of thinking, I see myself in every individual I cross paths with. I see that if things had been different, I would be them, or they would be me. In a sense, we’re all the same individual because if I had been born and raised in precisely your circumstances, I would be you, and if you had been born and raised precisely in my circumstances, you would be me. This is a powerful idea that has impacted my life.

There is nothing to feel too proud about. I should not feel that I am better than you. Or if you are in better circumstances than me, you should not feel that you are better than me, either.

This thinking helps me sympathize more and relate to people who are not in as fortunate circumstances. I think many of us fear interacting with someone who has less than us because I think deep down, we all know that we could just as easily have been in their shoes. But rather than empathize, we often choose to distance ourselves more and more from them. It’s easier to pretend they do not exist or to blame them for their shortcomings.

From a group or nation level, “I am better than you” is probably a persistent thought from people in many nations throughout the world. Nations tend to want their people to feel proud of their country – e.g., patriotism. Yet, there is a point where feeling that we are better than others can result in prejudices, racism, harassment, violence, etc.

When we think we are better, the mind easily shifts into a dark place, where we start to think it is okay to take control over someone else’s life, to use them for our purposes, to objectify or dehumanize them, or in the worst of cases, as a justification to exterminate people.

We should aim to support our thoughts with evidence. We shouldn’t have a thought and feel it is true just because it makes us feel good. And, we should aspire not to feel good just because a thought strokes our ego. We should aspire to get our self-esteem from good thoughts and good actions, not from belittling and looking down on others.

All I ask is that we take more caution with this widespread thought that we probably all have had at some point or another: “I am better than you.”