03/22/2019
Learning to Live in the Now
Life is suffering. While not exactly a cheery thought, the central tenant of Buddhist philosophy has as much truth to offer us today as it did that day under the Bodhi tree where Sidhartha found himself discovering the essence of the pain-riddled phenomenon that we call “life”. Each of us will love someone who will die. Each of us will die ourselves. We will love…and we will be rejected. We will care more for another than we are cared for. We will wish for the happiness of a loved one only to watch tragedy strike; both at their own hands and at the whims of fate.
This is the lot of the human being. While the lilies of the field and “the seeds that were silent all burst into bloom, and decay” without struggle, we shall watch our sun rise and fall, our seasons change and our days turn to night ever-clinging to what we hope will be, and what we hope will not come to pass. This is why life is suffering.
How then are we to live a life that transcends this ever-revolving carousel of joy and sadness, grief and elation? Is it even possible to let go of the constant need to clutch at what we have and push away from what we do not want? These are questions that plague of all of us. On cold nights as we toss and turn with worry, on rainy days as we stare out our windows lined with tracks where raindrops once slid, and on sunny days when all seems right with the world and yet we find ourselves glancing away from some unknown just-under-the-surface-anxiety, the question lingers. How do we find peace when there is so much to fear.
At times, anxiety and worry can seem like a birthright. So often do we find ourselves worried about a handshake gone wrong, a gift received without gratitude, or an undiagnosed illness that it can feel like second nature. By their very quality of existence, worry (which is the preoccupation with known things that can go wrong) and anxiety (which is the preoccupation with unknown things that may go wrong) are emotional. We cannot ruminate on the potential for harm or misfortune without experiencing negative affect. These distressing emotions can seem ever-present; like mosquitos on a lovely summer evening, ruining the fun with insidious swarming and nagging biting.
When we are anxious and worrying, we are apart from the here and now. And when we are separate from the hear and now we are struggling. In those moments when we are swatting away the mosquitos of worry, we are unable to be present with and and accept the moment as it is, insects and all. It is indeed the struggle to avoid being present with things that are the way they are at any given moment that is at the heart of life’s struggling. On an unconscious level, we have chosen to accept that things are supposed to be a certain way. That there are to be no bugs, no bites, and no worry. And here is our folly.
But what if there were another way? What if we were to begin to accept that not only does life contain nuisances like mosquitos and worry but that we also have the infinite capacity to experience all of it without suffering? What if there were some way to make peace with all of it; to accept “what we cannot change” and to even find joy and beauty in watching it all roll by? Wouldn’t that be a different kind of life? Wouldn’t it be a pleasure to see life as a mystery unfolding, something to explore with curiosity and awe rather than with dread and confusion? Not only is this life possible, it is with you even now. In fact, the human mind has the infinite capacity to contain and experience every emotion, thought, or sensation at all times, in all places. Pain, pleasure, anticipation, and regret can coexist side by side in our minds.
So how do we begin? According to the renown psychologist (who is single-handedly responsible for creating the Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction program or MBSR at Massachusetts General Hospital), the way we begin is by “dropping into now”. Dropping into the moment is both a philosophical and instructional beginning to learning to live in our lives with acceptance of the pain and sadness of life along with the great joys and ecstasy of being a human being. Dropping into now is beginning a process of turning away from worry and turning toward the moment we are in at the present moment.
Imagine driving your car for hours and hours and never checking in with the side mirrors, the rearview, or even the windshield. How far would you get? While many of us have had the experience of realizing that we haven’t thought about the road “here and there”, after only a few minutes, the thought of doing that for an entire road trip not only puts us at a major disadvantage, it is downright frightening. And yet some of us drive for our entire lives like that without ever checking in with our thoughts, feelings, or our bodily sensations and setting ourselves up for a life of major disadvantage.
Dropping into now begins when we acknowledge “what is” as opposed to existing in what “ought to be”. Right now at this moment, want are you feeling? What are you thinking” What is happening in your body? Maybe you don’t know. Maybe you haven’t even checked in with yourself today. Right now is the perfect time to start.
Start by getting comfortable wherever you are reading this. You can be on the train, on your sofa or at the office. The setting doesn’t matter so much. What matters is that you begin the process of slowing down what you are doing and begin noticing what is happening. Perhaps you are worrying right now and don’t even know it. Perhaps you are feeling nostalgic about a past loved one because you heard a song on the radio or smelled a perfume on a person and your mind was transported to a previous time in your life and you aren’t even aware of it. Dropping into now means beginning to dive gently into the experience of this very moment and being open to whatever is there.
While this is not intended to be a step-by-step guided entry into mindfulness practice, it is intended to be to be an outline with a few experiential exercises thrown in to deepen your understanding. With that in mind, once you have decided to drop into now by checking in with your thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations, you now have a superficial awareness of what is happening with you and now your aim is to accept it, whatever it may be. We are not trying to change anything, we are only trying to notice what is and accept it for what it is.
Are you feeling sad? Angry? Jealous, h***y, or joyous? Are you preoccupied with a big project or a perceived failure? Are you feeling pain in your lower back, tension in your shoulders, or tingling in your hands? All of it at once? It’s ok. Once we dip into the present moment, it can be overwhelming to realize just how much is going on under the surface, just how many phenomena are being ignored or even actively avoided. If that is what you have just realized, you are not alone. Many of us spend our whole lives being influenced by all of this stimuli, ignorant of all the consequences of not being able to live in the now. Essentially living mindlessly.
At this point, labeling is an important part of the process. If you are sad, call it sad. If you are mad, call it mad. This simple process of seeing what is for what it is can enable your mind to better process the experience. On a physiological level, when we label something, we begin to engage the part of our brain that is responsible for recognition, a higher-order process that is less preoccupied with emotion and more able to allow the sensation to be present without distress; the essence of acceptance.
Make room for all of it! You have the ability to experience joy and sadness with equal measure. In fact, when we begin to make room for all of it, we are beginning to let go of the struggle to hold on to what we enjoy and to resist what we do not like and that is the beginning of living mindfully. So often we fear that we cannot tolerate the loss of a loved one or the rejection of a lover and so we avoid feeling it, we do all that we can to avoid looking straight at it. But in fact, all that we are doing is avoiding our own healing. We are putting off what is actually our birthright: the capacity to love ourselves and others enough to make room for all of the world that we have in front of us to share.
And now that you have acknowledged, labeled and accepted what is there, you can redirect and let go. Too often a myth persists that to be present in our emotions is to wallow in therm. We are told to “move on” and to “quit living in the past” when nothing could be further from the truth. When we do not acknowledge what we are feeling and thinking, it is then that we are living in the past. When sensations go unacknowledged, we are only inviting them to come out in other ways, we are inviting ourselves to act out. The past has a way of staying in the present when we do not make room for it to be. It is only when we are fully aware of what we have felt that we can move on from them, that we can let them drift into the past. In fact, they already have.
A funny thing happens when we live in the moment. The moment is gone as soon as we know it is happening. You see, now is now and not then. This is not meant to be a riddle it is meant to be a truth. Our minds have the infinite capacity for change and try as we might, we cannot stop it. Anyone who has tried to mediate knows this all too well. If you have ever tried to focus on your breath, you quickly learn that the mind has other plans. Before you know it, you are thinking about cleaning the bathroom, that snide remark your sister-in-law made at dinner the other night or how much you have crushed out on your new friend. Its ok, thats what minds do: they wander. Use it to your advantage and be thankful when you have noticed that it has wandered for now you are being mindful, now you are living in the moment. And once you have noticed that you are, you can simply gently redirect your attention back to the moment at hand. The now!
In upcoming passages, we will explore in more philosophical depth and pragmatic instruction how to cultivate a mindfulness practice. We will talk about the benefits of mindfulness, we will talk about how to meditate and we will talk about how to transpose a formal, daily mediation practice into living mindfully in the now. But for now, I hope that we have at least piqued your curiosity about finding beauty in the now. The human mind is capable of enormous beautiful and loving relationships both with ourselves and with the world around us and those who live in it. When we begin to open up to all of it, to make room for it and to accept it without judgment, our ability to experience life for all its beauty begins to grow and in that growth a new style of living emerges that will challenge and engage us in ways that we had never before imagined were possible.
