Have you ever gotten down the road and realized that you hadn’t really paid attention as you drove? Your mind was busy “thinking” about stuff. What stuff? Was it important? Sometimes we’re not even sure what we were thinking about. Our cognitive, analytical mind was driving us while we were driving the car!
We are exploring being present to “the Now” because the present moment is the true reality.
Do we need our mind and the knowledge it holds? Yes. It is necessary for the practical realm of day-to-day living. But if our mind takes over all aspects of our lives, including our relationships with others and with nature, it becomes a monster — a parasitic Mind Monster. Yikes! To prevent being taken over by the Monster, we must learn how to change our perceptions by permanently shifting our consciousness. Breaking a pattern or paradigm is never easy, but for our personal wellbeing and the wellbeing of our entire planet, we must accept the challenge.
The first step to shifting our consciousness is to simply become the Watcher. We can then begin to notice when we are not aware of what is happening in the present moment. Start observing the habit you may have of escaping from the Now. If you are thinking about something in the future, you may have an image in your mind of something that is more pleasant than the present moment. Or you may have an image of something worse, which could cause you to become anxious. Neither image is real. It comes from your imagination. You have painted a picture of something that is unlikely to occur in the future and have become more interested in that imaginary picture than you are in experiencing what is going on right now.
Maybe you have done something similar to this: You are watching your child playing soccer and then all of a sudden you are thinking about an important meeting you have the next day. You create a story about the meeting in your mind, imagining it with enough details to make it feel like a real event. If you are worried about what may happen during the meeting, the tendency will be to try to prepare yourself for what you think will be unpleasant. If you believe that something good will result from the meeting, you entertain yourself with thoughts of joy and happiness. The soccer game goes on without you until you hear the screams from the onlookers and notice that your child must have just scored a goal and you missed it! Not a good feeling.
What was really accomplished by imagining that meeting to take place the next day? Nothing. You simply escaped the reality of the present moment, which had unfortunate consequences. Try explaining that to your child!
How do I know that this happens? Because I used to “rehearse” my future a lot, probably hoping that I could control the outcome by preparing for what might happen. That parasitic Monster had taken over my mind.
This week practice watching your mind. Just through observing your thoughts, you can begin to escape the pattern that steals you away from the Now. Be interested but not judgemental. Watch the thought, feel the emotion, and observe your reaction. You will become more present to your life automatically.
The moment you realize you are not present, you are present. Whenever you are able to observe your mind, you are no longer trapped in it. Another factor has come in, something that is not of the mind: the witnessing presence.
~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
Can you share any “aha” moments of when you became aware of how much your mind is controlling your consciousness? How did you begin to overcome the parasitic Mind Monster?