Being in the now, you are best prepared for every eventuality. Meet your challenges at full potential by taking the prime energy wasters, thinking mind and emotion, out of them. If I slow down and relax into it, I find the situation slows down too and becomes manageable. It is not by planning out every possible eventuality that I am best prepared for what may come. Completely in the moment, I have access to all my faculties including mind to respond from that assembled power. It is when I cling to mind and its ideas or other people that I am least prepared.
The oak tree can snap in a strong wind since it is rigid. The birch bends with the flow of the wind. I do better when I flow with the current, rather than resist it. I have learnt to trust my ability to make decisions for the moment in the moment in situations where I can’t plan ahead.
Being intensely in the moment, I shoot successfully from the hip, solving difficult situations. With thinking mind switched off, my brain has had a rest. There is more energy left for the working mind. I am very capable in the moment and have ingeniously extracted myself out of many a tight spot. It is merely when I am caught up in my mind and worry that I feel overwhelmed and unable. For me, what works best is approaching the situation like an Easter egg hunt. I know the solution is out there if I just stay calm and watchful, open to it at every turn. Intensely in the process, I experience joy on the journey and deep satisfaction at the solution. The thinking mind and emotions are not involved. At no point is there worry, self-doubt, pulling back or pushing ahead.
Danger and emergency situations force us into the Now. Slipping away from the moment even for a second, may mean death. In an emergency, time seems to slow down. We seem to observe ourselves doing things. It feels like it’s not really we who are doing them. Here we are in Self and we see life as it is because the mind stops. It has no answers and something infinitely more powerful takes over. My mind fears these situations, but once in them, I enjoy the action. The adrenaline gives me the strength to do; to enter the flow. I feel intensively alive in the process and energized afterwards.
Full potential
Socrates said that an unexamined life is not worth living, but it is also true that an unlived life is not worth examining.
Being here now, you make full use of opportunities. In working mind in the Now, I operate at full potential: I am at my best – focussed and productive. I do what I do well. I relate to others. I think of and remember the right things at the right time. I derive fulfilment and well-being from my task and creativity emerges. I peacefully achieve what I set out to do in a smooth and effortless flow.
The moment becomes amazing as I relax into it. A greater intelligence takes over. Inspirations, solutions, answers and right actions spontaneously emerge. They come calmly with no sense of urgency or attachment to outcome. The answer to everything, the solution to every problem, is right in front of you, if you open your eyes to your world. You just need to be present enough to perceive it. When I am calmly focussed on what I am doing, help or an answer sometimes come even before I am consciously aware of my need for them.
The only way to do justice to every single breath is to be completely here now. Then at least you have all of your Self available to you to meet the present moment with. Then real living happens – miracles, which is Self in action. You have unlimited power at your disposal beyond your mind once you are in the moment, working with what you have at hand.
Being and doing in the moment is energizing and energy-conserving. This is because you’re not dealing with sub-realities. These take up at least as much energy as this reality does. The American Indian teachings call living in the moment “the strategy of a warrior’. Then, you have inner peace, arising from a sense of purpose. In this way, you save more and more personal power. When I first applied this, I was struck by the difference it made. Just focussing on being present in each moment for one day, my mind had had a complete rest. I felt like I had had a day off and it had been a productive one.
Being here now enables extra-sensory perception. ESP can only operate once your mind is habitually on the here and now. For instance, when someone drops into your mind, you know they are about to make contact. You pick it up because there was actually a bit of empty space in your mind for that person to drop in to. Only completely present, do you see the shadows in between the leaves, and can you read between the lines.
Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water; after enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.
Enlightenment is to live the ordinary life so alert, so full of awareness and light, that everything becomes luminous. If you are present with that which is present, you are free – at least in that moment. Each moment that you’re fully present, you’re enlightened.
Transcend, purify, glorious – Richard Bach from ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull’