How to live in the present moment

‘Awareness’ brings us to the present moment

Meditation trains our awareness, our attention, and brings us to the present moment. 

You might think, “What’s awareness?” That word can be confusing, so I’ll help you to understand what it is.

Try doing this: keep your eyes open, but put your attention on your right big toe without looking at it. It’s like you are seeing your right big toe, but not with your physical eyes. You are seeing it with the eyes of awareness. That means your attention, your awareness, is on your right big toe.

That’s awareness. It doesn’t get any more complicated than that!

You either:

• Lose your one-pointed awareness and your mind wanders off, thinking all sorts of things; or
• Your awareness stays on the one point of focus and the thinking stops. 

You can do one or the other. It’s like you hit a T-junction—you either turn left or you turn right, but you can’t do both. It’s like that.

Meditation and the present moment

When we practice meditation, we are focusing our awareness on one-point for a long time. That means less time in our thoughts, thinking. There’s a feeling of deep peace, like we’ve been recharged. It’s a nice feeling. You can call it a positive side effect.

Meditation is an ‘activity of concentration’. You are focusing on something.

When you focus on the breath, you breathe in, and you know you’re breathing in; you breathe out, and you know you’re breathing out. You breathe in, you breathe out. You’re not thinking about what food you’re going to eat later! There are no thoughts coming.

While you are concentrating, as you long as your awareness doesn’t wander off into thoughts, you are present.

Why is living in the present moment so rare?

Very few people practice to be present in their daily life, and there are two reasons for that:

1. They don’t know how to be in the present moment, they don’t know how to concentrate with one-pointed focus; or
2. They do know how to be present—maybe they took some meditation classes—but they don’t understand the benefit of it.

With our time, we tend to do what we feel benefits us the most. We might think something is kind of good for us, but that doesn’t mean we understand how much it benefits us or enhances our life. Just because someone tells you that it’s great to live in the present moment, doesn’t mean you understand it.

If a person spends many hours panning for gold, it’s because they know that they’re going to get the gold, it’s going to benefit them.

Imagine if word gets around that there is a great spot to find gold, then suddenly everyone’s going to go to that spot. Similarly, if we understand that being present really enhances our life, we’ll be practicing all the time.

So, the first step is not to learn meditation techniques. The first step is to realise that, “This is gold.”

And I’ll tell you why it’s gold.

The value of the present moment in everyday life

The purpose of life is to maximize the beauty and the joy of every moment, and you can not enjoy life if you are thinking.

You might be sitting in a restaurant, but you can not enjoy the stir-fry if you’re thinking about whether your partner is going to cheat on you, or planning or worrying about constant issues in your mind. You can not enjoy the stir-fry! You’ll fill up your stomach, but you will not enjoy it.

Whereas if you are present, then you feel relaxed. You just eat the stir-fry, it tastes great, it’s beautiful.

Let’s say you’re a business person and you’re going to do a presentation to the board of a client’s company. If you’re present, there’s going to be strength and conviction and power in your words, in your delivery. When you speak, the audience will not fall asleep. Their eyes will be glued to you and your presentation will go well.

It’s also preventative of many difficulties. If you’re present for 30 minutes a day, and you know that you’re present, there’s no way in the world you can feel sadness. It’s impossible, because every second that you’re present, you’re recharging. You’re recharging your vitality.

How the present moment enhances our relationships

In relationships, you love your partner or your friend, but you can be speaking to them and your mind is still thinking about how to close the deal at work. That’s what I used to do before I learned about being present, and my ex-girlfriend would always know that I wasn’t listening!

If you’re not present and you’re constantly thinking, the person that you’re with doesn’t feel closeness. They love you, but there’s no closeness. They could be right next to you but it’s like a distance of a thousand kilometres.

When you’re present, the person feels you’re there, the person feels that you understand them.

Naturally, every human being is seeking that closeness or that unity or that connection. When people don’t feel that closeness it’s like they don’t feel alive. So when a person doesn’t feel that closeness, that’s what ruins a relationship.

You see the magic of your children more, because the magic of your children is in the little things, not the big things. 

They will ask a question and you will be amazed at how they are seeing the world—“Oh my God, how did they come up with that question?” See, you won’t miss these little things. When you’re thinking constantly, they can ask that same question but you won’t recognize the wonder and the beauty of it.

How to live in the present moment

In this field, you don’t need to make time to practice because there are techniques to be present throughout your daily life. You don’t have to go to a cave in the Himalayas, or set aside many hours to sit and meditate.

There are meditation techniques with open eyes, there are moving meditation techniques. I’ll give you an example of moving meditation—dishwashing! That’s moving meditation, that’s a good practice!

There’s nothing that you can’t turn into a meditation—eating meditation, walking meditation, driving meditation. And you won’t see this in the meditation books but it can be done—toilet meditation! You can turn anything into a meditation.

For example, while you’re washing the dishes, you can focus on the feel of the water and feel the scrubbing. It’s nothing spectacular or amazing. You’re just doing the ordinary washing of the dishes, but you’re feeling the water, you’re scrubbing and you know you’re there. You don’t wander off in your mind, thinking about how to solve some problem or what you’re going to do on the weekend.

In other words, you turn it into a meditation because you’re present.

If you wash the dishes and you feel the water you’re just aware. You feel it, you wash it, there is no ‘extreme’ spiritual feeling, just natural, normal washing of the dishes, but you’re aware.

Learn from someone who knows the present moment

We need someone who knows the present moment to give us assurance about how to be in the present moment. Because it’s possible to think you’re in the present moment when you’re not. And it’s possible to be in the present moment and not know that.  So in that sense it can be tricky.

If I’ve never been to India before I can’t give you a tour of India. So in the same way we need someone to guide us to the present moment, and we need someone to give us confirmation so that when we’re there we actually know we’re there, and when we’re not we actually know we’re not.

Start off for five seconds and know, 100%, that you’re in the present moment for that whole five seconds—you’d bet your life on it. You’ve got to have that conviction. If you won’t bet your life on it then that means you’re not sure, so it’s just theoretical. But the present moment is not theoretical.

So you need someone who actually knows that state, who has no doubt, and can confirm whether or not you are in the present moment. That’s the most practical approach—to learn from someone that knows the present moment. Not just ‘knows the present moment’—but their whole being resides permanently the present moment.

And once we’re able to be in the present moment for five seconds, and know it with conviction, then we can stretch it out to ten seconds, one minute, an hour, five hours, every moment.

Once you’re able to be in the present moment every moment, at will, now it becomes very hard not to be in the present moment. But right now, for most of us, it’s the other way round.

So we need someone that knows the present moment to guide us, give us assurance, and the rest is just practice, practice, practice.

My own journey in the present moment

When I was a spiritual seeker, I used to drive around Sydney a lot and if I was not practicing to be present, the first thing is I would have had more car accidents. Being present, I avoided so many accidents, so many close calls. Because I was aware, I could see someone was going to cut in. Or I was changing lanes and I could see another car coming in at the same time, so I’d pull back over.

There were so many times I was in these situations and because I was aware and calm it was no issue. You can avoid so many accidents.

I should tell this to the insurance company to reduce my premium!

If people were rude to me, I was able to practice to be present and I got better at it. In the beginning I was terrible—like everything, in the beginning you’re not good at it. But I was able to be present so I didn’t let that person disturb my peace of mind.

Really understanding the benefits

It enhances our life in so many ways. If we really understand the benefits of being present, we will drop all these ideas of, “Ohh that’s not for me—I’m not a spiritual person.” We’re practical, we learn how to enhance our life.

We tend not to think about being present because we’re busy, our life is busy—we can’t just sit and do closed-eyes meditation—there’s too much to do after work etc. 

But if we understand the benefits, we consider, “OK, how can I be present while I’m working, while I’m walking to the bus stop, while I’m sitting at the bus stop waiting, while I’m sitting on the bus? While I’m sitting in the business meeting!” There would be no time wasted.

Summary

Being in the present moment enhances our life, which is exactly what meditation is about. It enhances our life in every way.

But very few people practice to be present because they don’t understand the benefit of it. Or they understand the benefit of it a little, but they think other things are a lot more important.

If a person understands that it’s gold, they drop other things and get the gold.

So it’s much easier to practice being in the present moment when we understand how much it benefits us:

• We are able to enjoy every moment of life, noticing the inherent simple beauties, instead of living in the worry and stress of our thoughts.
• Our work and business endeavours are more successful when we are in the present moment because we are calm and relaxed, we have presence.
• It avoids issues and problems when they arise—from feelings of sadness and anxiety to accidents while we are driving. When we’re present, it recharges our energy and makes problems shrink and disappear instead of exploding into big problems.
• It enhances our relationships because people feel closeness when we are really present with them.
• We are able to maintain our peace of mind, so we enjoy all aspects of life more.

The trademark of being present is harmony. When you’re calm and relaxed, it always leads to harmony.

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