If It Goes So Fast Then For G-d's Sake, Let Me Enjoy It Now

Nearly every time I am out with my nearly two-year old daughter, someone cheerfully instructs me to "Enjoy the time with her now because it goes so fast."  The same was true and continues to be true with my nine year old.  I guess you could say that I have been listening to this line for the last... well, nine years.  Since the very first time I heard it, I found that my body had an immediate distaste for this advice. 

I have tried a variety of responses over the years, to behave agreeably, but the response that I truly want to utter when someone offers me these kind words is "For G-d's sake then, let me enjoy this moment NOW." 

We are taught in this culture that there is something somewhere outside of us that will make us okay.  When we have that thing we will be able to rest, to be, to finally land in our NOW.  Sometimes we get that thing and for a little while, we feel okay.  We feel we can be present in the moment as long as we have that thing.  Sometimes we lose that thing and we lose our okayness, and we believe that the okayness went away with the thing.  And so we begin searching again for that same thing or another, that will again return us to okayness. 

But often, it does not even take losing out object of okayness to find ourselves back in a state of searching and longing, for the something that will make us be able to bare being here. 

Soon after we get what we thought we wanted, we turn our attention to the time when we will lose it.  Enjoy this time with your children because soon enough it will be gone.  Or, once we have the thing that makes us feel okay we instantly begin thinking about how we are going to keep it.  One friend describes being in her favorite yoga class spending the entire class thinking, I should really do more yoga, and mentally planning her schedule for future yoga classes.  Even when we have what we want, we still can't land in this moment.  We cling to the illusion that there are indeed a set of circumstances that, once we achieve them, will finally, miraculously make this moment inhabitable. We will be able to rest--here--and stop striving to get somewhere else. 

The truth is our mind is allergic to now, regardless of what it contains!  Good or bad, we can't be in it.  No matter the contents of now, the mind races ahead--searching for the next thing that will make us want to be where we are.  Quite simply, the mind is programmed to take us somewhere else--anywhere but here.  That is its job and the task upon which its survival depends.  When we enter now and stop striving to get something or somewhere else--to a better moment--there really is nothing left for the mind to do.  Our attention, our being, has dropped below the neck, and our "I" disappears into the experience itself.  The mind is off duty, and as far as the mind is concerned, off duty means dead. 

What are we to do with this mind and its allergy to now?  The remedy to this allergy is first and foremost, the recognition of the  allergy itself.  Once aware of the mind's adversarial relationship with the now, we can then include this relationship (its striving, its fear) into the moment itself.  That is to say, rather than moving our attention to the future that the thoughts are about--getting involved in the contents of the thoughts--the thoughts simply become part of the landscape of this present moment.  Because your mind is generating thoughts about the vacation week in December when you will finally be able to relax and be present, does not mean that your attention needs to jump to December, or that you can't relax and be present right now, here, in October.  We simply meet this now with the thoughts about December noticed and included. 

In this way we are not controlled by the mind's terror of now and not continually kidnapped by the future-oriented thoughts that the mind generates.  We watch the mind scurry and strive, desperately searching for a role--something to do, somewhere else to take us--as we simultaneously remain still and present, here, experiencing this moment--with all that it includes.   In so doing, at last, we come to know ourselves as the spacious landscape within which the monkey mind--in its full rash of hives--is welcome to keep scampering and searching, but without our having to react or--ever--abandon this now.  This is freedom.

What If This Moment IS Your Olympic Moment?

I am a runner—a reluctant runner. After nearly three decades of pounding the streets, my runner’s high has reached an all-time low, and unless I am filled to the brim with caffeine, I mostly grin and bear it, and wait for my run to be over.  And yet, I do enjoy the post-exercise endorphins, and the feeling of presence that physical activity so reliably delivers.  I also know that running is good for me physically and thus I continue to lace up my sneakers—because I should.

During a recent outing, as I gnashed my teeth and counted the minutes to thirty, my mind posed an interesting question.  What if—right now—I were running the final lap of the Olympic marathon? What if this minute were the minute I had trained for all of my life.  Suddenly, miraculously, I felt an incredible rush, as if hurled down a magic tube into run itself.  The trap door had opened and I was deposited into now.  The “me” who had been enduring it, who should be exercising, was gone without a trace. The run was no longer something happening to me; no longer something I needed to get through until I could return to my life.  There was just this body moving. Furthermore, I no longer needed to protect myself from the experience, to reserve my energy or control my movements in order to keep “me” from suffering some imagined future consequence.  I had made a conscious choice to transform my relationship with the moment, to turn it into the moment that mattered.  Poured into my legs, my feet, my breath, there was only an experience unfolding, and my absence was exhilarating.

As a long time equestrian athlete as well as a practitioner of Advaita Vedanta, I have had the good fortune to dip into the “flow” state on many occasions.  But what struck me about this particular event was my mind’s participation in the process.  Never before had I been able to employ my mind in order to gain entry into the non-mind state.  In the past, when “flow” occurred, it was organic—something that resulted effortlessly through my passion for and engagement in the experience at hand.  But in this case, I had somewhat initiated the non-separate state with a proposal from my (normally) separating mind.  Had my mind known the consequence/benefit of what it was suggesting when it came up with its Olympic proposal?  Or perhaps was it awareness itself that had used the mind as a tool to realize itself?

Regardless of the answer, my mind was delighted to claim credit and assume its new role as the “one” who could remove itself—could successfully “do” the disappearing.  It wanted this feather in its identity hat.  Nonetheless, it was clear that something important had happened.  My mind had participated in its own disappearance, and in the realignment with awareness itself.   If I could harness my mind to help in this uncovering process (and keep it from taking over) then I had discovered a potentially powerful tool in accessing the pure state.  Perhaps I had—at last—discovered something that the mind could actually “do” to help me lose it. 

What if we were to choose to live every moment as if it were the last experience that we would ever get to experience?  If this were my final moment as an embodied human being with the gift of senses, would I stand on the shore clinging to my small and separate self, denying myself a last experience, a last swim?  Or, would I surrender into the gift of this last sensation, dive into its fullness, swim it with full gusto?  Me thinks I would go swimming!

To say that we should pay closer attention to now is a good start, but not the whole story.  Running those last strides as if they were the final lap of the Olympic marathon, I was not paying closer attention to the now, but rather, I was it.  I was not running because of what it would do for me or say about me, nor for the ego goodies that would come with my imminent gold medal.  It was not “about” me at all.  While it sounds like it would be a loss—to take away the “I” who would get to “have” the experience, to live it, and then later keep it as memory.  But as it turns out, being the experience ends up being far more direct and delicious than any thing I could ever “have.” 

We have a choice as to how we live each moment—as something to get through, to have, to use as proof of who we are—or simply, blessedly, as the moment itself—from within its very unfolding.  For me, it was the Olympic scene that cracked the barrier and deposited me inside now.  But discover your own scenario, your own Olympic moment.  Invite yourself to dive into now, with whatever words or ideas point you there.  If we can harness the mind as an ally in this process, we may just be able to initiate our own passage into the epicenter of experience and being—the eternal now.