On being here now…
“Be here now.”
~ Ram Dass
Most of us are perpetually focused on their everyday problems…they seem significant however most are unimportant in the bigger scheme and won’t even be remembered. Our decisions are overly influenced by the most immediate event; they easily become emotional and ascribe greater significance to a problem than it should have in reality.
Conversely, when we fully immerse ourselves in the world around us, we experience joy and gratitude for all that surrounds us.
It is so interesting that something that seems should be so simple and obvious sometimes seems so difficult and complex...and even impossible for many.
“Life exists only at this very moment, and in this moment it is infinite and eternal. For the present moment is infinitely small; before we can measure it, it has gone, and yet it exists forever...”
~ Alan Watts
“The unhappy person is never present to themself because they always live in the past or the future.”
~Soren Kierkegaard
"Guilt lives in the past.
Worry lives in the future.
Peace lives in the present."
All living beings suffer physical pains and pleasures but in not knowing past or future, animals remain free from care and anxiety together with their torment. Humans regret the past we cannot change and have hopes for the future which are rarely fulfilled.
“If you talk all the time, you have nothing to talk about but your own talking. If you think all the time, you have to think about but your own thoughts. So one occasionally has to suspend thought to be in a state of what I will call pure sensation.”
~ Alan Watts
"Nothing ever happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now. What you think of as the past is a memory trace, stored in the mind, of a former Now. When you remember the past, you reactivate a memory trace - and you do so now. The future is an imagined Now, a projection of the mind. When the future comes, it comes as the Now. When you think about the future, you do it now. Past and future obviously have no reality of their own. Just as the moon has no light of its own, but can only reflect the light of the sun, so are past and future only pale reflections of the light, power, and reality of the eternal present. Their reality is 'borrowed' from the Now."
~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
Unless it is remembered, the past (by definition) is always gone. Even if it is remembered, that memory of the past actually occurs right here, in the present. It’s not really the past itself but another new event here in the present. Likewise, the future, unless it is anticipated, has never happened, and if anticipated, the anticipation of it also occurs here, in the present.
“We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal hairline between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality. We confuse the world as talked about, described, and measured with the world which actually is. We are sick with a fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas.”
~Alan Watts
“I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there us and all there is.”
~Alan Watts
“This is the real secret of life, to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play. “
~Alan Watts
"Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it."
~Soren Kierkegaard
“Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?”
~ Tennessee Williams, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore
“If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step
The being here now, aka mindfulness, formula is simple — it is the aware, balanced acceptance of the present experience.
If you happen to be sitting, just sit. If you are smoking a pipe, just smoke it. If you are thinking out a problem, just think. But don’t think and reflect unnecessarily, compulsively, from sheer force of nervous habit. In Zen, they call this having a leaky mind.
Being here now is opening to or receiving the present moment, pleasant or unpleasant, just as it is, without either clinging to it, wanting to change it, or rejecting it.
When you are focused on your device instead of your surroundings, you often don’t even remember being there, because to some extent you were never really there in the first place.
The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans. The present is our only reality...life happens in the present moment.
This focus on future outcomes makes it all too easy to miss what is happening right now.
The pleasure and meaning you can find right now are real; the meaninglessness of the future is not.
Humans tend to spend too much time outside the present moment, not thinking about what we are doing. We ruminate about things that happened in the past or are worrying about what things that are yet to come, the latter going hand in hand with fantasies about negative outcomes. This is time consuming and evokes emotions which might cause unnecessary pain.
Imaginings of the past and future are harder to bear than the present moment.
"Do not disturb yourself by imagining your whole life at once. Don’t always be thinking about what sufferings, and how many, might possibly befall you. Ask instead, in each present circumstance: "What is there about this that is unendurable and unbearable?", You will be embarrassed to answer"
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.36
"Think about individuals; consider men in general; there is not one whose life is not focused on tomorrow. What harm is there in that you ask? Infinite harm. They are not really living. They are about to live"
~ Seneca, Epistles 45.12-13
“How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.”
~ Thomas Jefferson
"My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened."
~ Montaigne
"Yet the greatest waste of life lies in postponement: it robs us of each day in turn, and snatches away the present by promising the future. The greatest impediment to living is expectancy, which relies on tomorrow and wastes today."
~ Seneca
Just about the most foolish thing you can hear—coming from someone else or coming out of your own mouth—are the words: “Someday, I’ll…” “When I’m older I hope to…” “I’m not ready right now but…” “If I ever finish this, then I’ll...”
What makes you think you have that luxury? What makes you think you’ll have the time? Forget about issues of self-worth and status and dues-paying for a moment. From a practical perspective, you can’t get ready for something that’s already here. And that’s what life is. It’s right now. Right this second.
“One of these days” is today.
“Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand and melting like a snowflake.”
~ Francis Bacon Sr.
These are “the good ole days”.
Don't let your imagination be crushed by life as a whole. Don't try to picture everything bad that could possibly happen. Stick with the situation at hand.
Don’t be too concerned about tomorrow for it will take care of itself.
No amount of anxiety is ever going to change anything that’s going to happen and no amount of regret can change the past.
Living in the past leads to depression, living in the future leads to anxiety, living in the now leads to happiness.
Don’t be a fool. Live today. Be the best you can be now.
“There are only two days in the year that nothing can be done. One is called Yesterday and the other is called Tomorrow. Today is the right day to Love, Believe, Do and mostly Live.”
–Dalai Lama
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Autotelic people don’t do things for specific end results, awards or recognition. They do things for the sheer enjoyment of doing them. The goal isn’t the destination, it’s the journey, which is its own reward.
The word autotelic is derived from two Greek words: auto, meaning ‘self’, and telic, meaning ‘goal’.
If we’re capable of finding enjoyment in each moment we don’t have to search for or chase after happiness.
It’s already there!
What we do is then no longer a means of achieving happiness, but an expression of our happiness.
This doesn’t imply some kind of narcissistic hedonism. To be autotelic isn’t simply to do what we want all the time. That’s not possible anyway. We all have obligations, duties and responsibilities in life. The key isn’t trying to avoid these things, but changing the way we approach them.
Autotelic people have the ability to find enjoyment in the simplest and most mundane of things.
In fact, to the autotelic, there’s no such thing as mundane.
Every moment is fresh and alive, and if we pay attention to what’s happening around us, we become less concerned with ourselves and more engaged in the present moment.
By adopting the autotelic mindset we can experience immense pleasure in the simplest of things.
Focused attention can make everything come alive!
Be here now
Wherever you are right now is the most important place in the world.
Whoever you’re with is the most important person in the world.
And whatever you’re doing is the most important thing in the world.
We can’t truly find enjoyment in life until we bring our full attention to where we are.
By continually living in our head, we become disconnected from the flow of life — which is only ever found right here, in the present moment.
To be autotelic is to be a master of mindfulness.
Mindfulness is bringing our full attention to where we are and what we’re doing.
It means being PRESENT, alert and awake.