It’s official: The health-minded community is obsessed with mindfulness. It’s not just the health community, either. Sectors from education to business, to the military, to self-care, have adopted mindfulness as a golden child. So, if you’re not familiar with the concept, it might be a good time to ask, “What is this thing we’re all talking about and trying to create?” Simply put, what does it mean to be mindful?
But this begs the question, why is it so hard to be in the present moment? Or perhaps more to the point, what gets in the way of our being where we are?
The first and most obvious obstacle to being fully present is distraction. We’re in a constant state of motion, busyness, and getting to somewhere else—using our devices, substances, entertainment, chatter, and anything else we can find to avoid being here, now. Doing is our first line of defense against being present.
The most treacherous impediment to mindful attention, however—even more than busyness and activity—is thought. The mind—maker of thoughts—is forever chattering, distracting us, telling us stories, and beckoning us to not be where we are, but rather to get involved in the ticker tape of plot twists it’s creating.
When it comes to avoiding the present moment, we tend to employ a handful of habitual thinking patterns. First, we separate ourselves from the now by narrating our experience as it’s happening. We essentially follow ourselves around, incessantly commenting on our own experience. “Oh look, I’m having a good time here, this is going well, they seem to like me,” and so on—the voiceover of now, the soundtrack to our life. All day and night we tell ourselves the story of ourselves, the story of our life. Sadly, we often live the voiceover, rather than life itself.
Similarly, we continually package our experience as it’s happening, preparing the story that will later tell the tale of our life. As the present moment is unfolding, we’re preoccupied with transcribing the now into a summary or narrative, ever-readying the present moment for some future explanation or presentation for others, or perhaps just ourselves.
- Why is this present moment happening?
- What does this now say about me and my life?
- What do I need to do about this now?
So, thoughts are a way that our mind tries to control our life. We are constantly managing, controlling, and making sense of our present experience, in the hopes of steering our life in a direction we design. The mind doesn’t trust that we can just be where we are and relax in the present moment, certainly not without managing and controlling where this moment is going. We don’t trust that life will take care of us if we stop being in charge.
Furthermore, when we drop into the present moment, without trying to control it or think it into a story, our mind is left without a task, without something to do, figure out, or make happen. Our mind then has nothing to do; it’s idle, which it hates. For this reason, our mind vehemently rejects the now, and uses the present moment to generate ideas and issues that will require their own attention and input. Our mind, by thinking the now into a problem or an idea, effectively creates a full-time job for itself.
It’s often said that we avoid the present moment to avoid ourselves. But in fact, when we dive fully into the present moment and are fully engaged in our experience, as in the flow state, we are fully immersed in a task that energizes our mind and brings us to full focus. In such states, what we discover, paradoxically, is that we lose ourselves. We disappear, and that’s precisely what makes it so delicious and makes us want to return again and again. In full presence or flow state, we don’t experience ourselves as separate, as the one living the experience; there is only the experience of which we are a part.
We’re always running from the present moment, not to escape ourselves, but to escape the absence of ourselves. The battle with the present moment is an existential battle for the mind; the flight from now is its fight to exist.
Being in the now, without a narrative, requires a death—or at least a temporary letting go—of the mind.
When we have the courage to drop out of mind and into the present moment, what we find is the opposite of a void. We find wholeness—an experience without an experiencer. We encounter ourselves as presence inseparable from life, rather than a person who is living, directing, managing, and controlling this thing called life. In the process, we discover liberation and something as close as I’ve ever found to the end of suffering.
To begin practicing this paradigm shift, start small.
These and other simple pointers can escort us into a radically new experience of living, and can be used as portals to a serenity that our mind, no matter how much it wants to be involved, cannot figure out or create. When we’re fully present, living in the now rather than our mind’s interpretation of it, a palpable peace unfolds—a peace that surpasses all understanding. This is mindfulness in action.
