Mindfulness: How Far Can You Go?

Mindfulness practice is like Russian dolls. Just when you think you have gotten to the biggest doll in the set, you discover that that doll too is inside an even bigger doll. In mindfulness practice, we are continually discovering thoughts behind thoughts behind still more thoughts, seemingly ad infinitum. The more evolved our practice, the further back (behind thought and emotion) we can travel, and the more layers of thought and feeling we can see before becoming identified with what’s arising. Ultimately, mindfulness practice increases our capacity to witness what is happening inside and outside of us, until there is no more self to do the witnessing.

The difficulty or limitation we often run into in mindfulness practice is that we put the brakes on too soon, close our eyes and dive into or become aligned with the material that our mind is presenting. Specifically, we witness an aspect of our mind but then we get caught in the next layer of thoughts, the ones that say something about what we just witnessed. What’s different about this second layer of thoughts is that we believe them, and thus are not able to see them as something separate from us. There is no longer an I to witness them.

Two cases in point:

A woman practicing mindfulness notices that as she walks on the street her mind never stops announcing its preferences and judgments about what she is seeing. Her mind shouts out “Wow, I hate that haircut, darn that’s a big behind, I wish I had that handbag, and on it goes.” She is not particularly interested in the judgments that come, but that fact doesn’t keep them from coming. Through her mindfulness practice, she becomes aware that her mind ceaselessly judges everything it sees. (In other words, she has a regular human mind.) Step one of her mindfulness practice is successful in that sense. But then, as a result of this newfound awareness about her mind, she hears new thoughts. The mind generates new material. The new thoughts tell her that she will never be a spiritualperson, that she is judgmental by nature and in fact hopeless and awful. At this stage in the process, she and her thoughts become united. She believes them. They are one thing. What she doesn’t do is move to the next Russian doll and see that these judgments of herself are just another set of thoughts that the mind is presenting. At this stage, when her thoughts become self-critical, she believes them, merges with them, and thus loses her perspective on them.

This woman is a classic example of what many people do with their mindfulness practice, namely, use it against themselves. This woman learns something about her mind’s nature and then silently, cleverly, the mind slips back into the driver’s seat and generates new thoughts about the person who would have such a mind, blaming the person for being the wishful thinker of such unacceptable thoughts. The witness however believes these new thoughts and doesn’t see them as the most recent incarnation of mind that they are. At this point, the mindful witness joins forces with the mind and the practice of mindfulness is suspended until further notice.

In a second example, a man who is attending a business meeting notices that his mind becomes very agitated and busy when a female colleague starts telling a personal story to the group. The thoughts he hears are angry and blaming of his colleague, for taking up everyone’s time with her nonsense. Using mindfulness practice, he sees these thoughts and is able to refrain from trying to change them or get involved. He is aware of having the thoughts without the accompanying anxiety and inner turbulence that has accompanied such thoughts in the past. But then his mind gets sneaky, telling him that he is an angry person, just like his father before him, and that he will never have a partner if he feels this way when women tell their stories. He believes these new thoughts and does not see them as just the next layer of thought that the mind is generating. Because he cannot see them as yet another (stepped up) version of his mind, he becomes afraid of them—afraid of his own mind. At this point, he is back to being a hostage of the mind and his mindfulness practice is derailed.

Behind every thought is another thought. As we go further in our mindfulness practice, we get better at seeing the thought behind the thought, without combining ourself with it. We have to keep our witness goggles firmly in place as the mind morphs into subtler manifestations of itself, and gets more and more difficult to keep track of and visible, out in front of us. The mind is a master chameleon and an expert at becoming whatever it needs to become in order for us to stop seeing it as separate from who we are. Mindfulness practice is an effort to see even that chameleon-like quality.

Furthermore, mindfulness practice is often practiced without one of its most important elements, namely, curiosity. The attitude that accompanies mindfulness is one of kindness and interest. When we learn something new about the nature of our mind, whether we want that to be its nature or not, we take the attitude of “Huh, wow, look at that, that’s what my mind does. Curious!”

Mindfulness practice is not conditional; we are not observing our mind in order to make a case against it or ourself. The eyes that are looking at the mind in mindfulness must be compassionate eyes, or at least neutral, understanding that this wild animal called human mind is after one thing, survival, which is synonymous with being in charge. Mindfulness practice helps us realize that we don’t choose the thoughts our mind spits up but we do choose whether or not to listen to or believe them. In truth we are the one the mind is talking to, the one whose attention the mind is trying to keep, but the mind doesn’t want us to know that.

When you reach the thought or feeling that you believe is the last one, the witness itself, the ultimate observer of mind, don’t stop there. Notice that you have stopped looking and pull the lens back yet again. Ask yourself, who (or what) perceives even that last thought, the one that feels like truth, who you are, or just what is? Get behind even that “last” thought or feeling, and then see where you are. There’s always further to go… until there isn’t, and you aren’t.

Has Social Media Turned Life Into a Popularity Contest?

Is it my imagination or has life regressed into a giant popularity contest, measurable (thanks to the Internet) in numbers of followers, views, “likes,” etc.? Is the new goal for our existence, the new virtue to aspire to, being popular, or at least perceived as such?

A young woman recently came to me excited and proud of herself. When I asked why, she told me that she had managed to acquire 20 new Instagram followers, cracking a ceiling that she had been unable to reach. She had achieved this “accomplishment” by using her Instagram credits in a particular way that I didn’t quite understand. While it was not clear if the new followers actually signed up themselves, she was quick to inform me that they were indeed real people, even if she didn’t know them personally. This is the new definition of “accomplishment"—raising your numbers of followers, thereby achieving the impression that you are interesting and, of course, popular. Who needs actual athletic, personal, or academic accomplishments, when you can feel the real pride that comes from having your selfie earn a one-minute spot on Instagram’s front page!

It’s sad enough to value popularity as a goal in life, but tragic when we realize that the so-called followers we consider valuable and important are not actually followers at all, in the true sense of the word. Followers used to mean people who believed in us or our ideas—devotees. It had a qualitative meaning. Now followers are numbers we amass by using the Internet in increasingly clever ways. Often our followers know nothing about us or what it is they are supposedly following. The new follower is simply a statistic that we buy with the “like” of someone else’s post or the promotion of someone else’s page. People even advertise: If you follow me, I will follow you. It's a game of smoke and mirrors.

In even more extreme cases, some followers are not even real humans but rather BOTs, otherwise known as web robots. These followers don’t exist at all, except as lines of computer code. They are in fact computer programs designed to behave like humans. Such lines of code pump up someone’s followers number, which then makes it look as if they are more popular. And here’s where it gets really high-school-ish: Other people then follow that person because they think he or she is popular. The emperor not only naked, but downright mad!

There used to be a developmental stage in life, usually sometime in our thirties, when we moved from the outside to the inside. That is, we would stop defining ourselves by what others thought of us and became more interested in what we thought about ourselves and the world, regardless of whether it was popular or not.

This stage could also be called “growing up.”

It seems, though, that this stage of life has now been canceled. More and more, no matter our age, our sense of self and what is important to us is determined by what others think, or at least what it looks like they think.

Young adults run much of the internet industry and for that generation, popularity as a pursuit is not appropriate. But as the internet becomes more pervasive in our lives, the rest of us, who are not creating code, and not twenty-somethings, are gradually taking on the values of the generation that is.

In truth, we still have a choice of how we want to behave. All great movements of change began because someone was willing to stand for something that wasn’t popular. I wonder if we still have the courage to put our name on something that has no followers? If it had always been this way, could any great revolution ever have come to pass?

Is being popular really what we want to hold up as the most meaningful aspect of life, or the truest sign of achievement? Because this is precisely what we are now modeling. We are encouraging children to chase approval, no matter how shallow, and view their own worth as determined by external sources, often people they don’t even know or respect. “Likes” are flimsy planks on which to build a house of self-worth and moral structure. If we adults don’t re-establish a firm gauge for what is important in life, for what sustains and nourishes us, makes us feel genuinely well, and gives us a deeper sense of meaning, we will emotionally and spiritually bankrupt ourselves and future generations.

We will certainly rob our children of the experience of true self-esteem. 

The values I consider important may be irrelevant in 10 years. Perhaps by then, "followers" will come to mean something entirely different, and take on a profundity we can’t yet imagine. Perhaps there won’t even be a private, internal self left to consult with on what is important, and all that will remain is a universal, internet-based selfie.

In the meantime, I will encourage my children to like themselves, to become their own destination regardless of what’s gone viral, and to view accomplishment as something internally-driven, earned, and reliable. This is the best lesson we can offer. At the very least, it gives children a chance at having real confidence, and a life that will nourish them with substance and meaning. But, we adults have to model this mindset and behavior—by assigning worth back where it belongs, and not letting the internet dictate our larger human priorities and values. We can do better than popularity as our mission statement and purpose in life. We can all graduate from high school—yet again.

Mindfulness For the Uncooperative Mind

Mindfulness is hot, and like all hot topics, it comes with a lot of truths and a lot of falsehoods. Teaching mindfulness, I hear the same questions arising time and again, misunderstandings really about what mindfulness is and what it means as a practice or way of life. Indeed, most of the obstacles that we believe stand in the way of living mindfully are, in fact, not obstacles at all.

The Big Three: Misconceptions about Mindfulness

#1  Mindfulness is not for the everyday Joe—not applicable to a regular life.

As one client expressed, I have kids, which means that I am constantly planning for then… camps, holidays, dinner recipes, weekend babysitting, etc. etc. I can’t just be here in the now, it’s not practical for real life. Mindfulness doesn’t apply to my always-planning mom existence!

Many of my clients arrive with the belief that having to do anything that involves or is about the future disqualifies them from being mindful. In truth, mindfulness simply means being conscious or aware of what is happening inside and outside of you right now. Being awake to life as it is unfolding. Planning for the future and attending to the past are necessities in modern life, and neither has anything to do with being mindful. While the contents of what we are planning may be related to the future, the planning itself is something that is happening right now. Perhaps we are making an airplane reservation—the airplane will take off in the future but conversing with the agent, experiencing sensations in the hand holding the phone, receiving thoughts about what you are hearing, taking in sounds from the room, feeling emotions about the upcoming travel, all of it and a thousand other events are all occurring right now. Making plans, with mindfulness, simply means paying attention to the experience of making plans, being awake to what it is like for you to live this moment of planning. The subject of the moment is irrelevant; the moment itself is always happening right here and right now. Nothing can ever be happening in any time but now. If at this moment your body is breathing, then there is a present experience available to you, and thus mindfulness is possible.

#2  Mindfulness means focusing on my breath or meditating, which isn’t always possible in everyday life. Hence, mindfulness is a step away from or out of life. A client put it this way, when a strong emotion comes up, like when I get really angry at my boss at work, I can’t always just check out of the conversation and start listening to my breath or chanting om. Mindfulness, for this reason, is not really viable in real life tough situations.

The truth is, practicing mindfulness does not require checking out of life, but just the opposite, checking into life. When a strong feeling such as anger arises, mindfulness simply means paying attention to what that anger feels like in the body, how it manifests, what thoughts and stories accompany it, everything that is happening inside and outside you as you experience the anger right now. Mindfulness means witnessing that strong emotion with full presence, watching the weather of anger erupt in the sky of awareness. Sometimes it does help to come back to the breath, just for a moment, to get grounded in your body and not spin off in the storm of mind, but this is not necessary for practicing mindfulness. Mindfulness means staying here where you are—with whatever is here in the present moment, and meeting your direct experience, your life, as it actually is.

#3  I can’t be mindful with this mind, my mind as it is; if and when my mind is different, calmer perhaps, then possibly, mindfulness can happen. Many people believe that mindfulness requires a certain kind of mind, a baseline of peacefulness or tranquility, and that their mind as it is is far too wild to practice such a skill.

In fact, mindfulness does not depend on any particular kind of mind and certainly not a calm one. If mindfulness required a calm mind, it would have died out as a practice a long time ago. In the same way that meditation is an investigation of your inner world as it is, right now, without preference or judgment, similarly, mindfulness is just an honest look at the way your mind, your direct experience, and your life is at any given moment. You are not more mindful if what you discover is that you like the moment you are living and no less mindful if what you become aware of is not pleasing. Mindfulness only means that you are noticing, becoming conscious of and dwelling in your direct experience, not pushing it away, or if you are trying to push it away, noticing that too. Mindfulness is not about what you find when you drop down into yourself, but that you do drop down into yourself, and that you do so with an attitude of compassionate curiosity. If, in turning the lens on yourself, what you notice is that your mind is judging your experience unkindly, then mindfulness would entail bringing an open and kind curiosity to that unkind and judging mind. And so it goes. There are no right answers in mindfulness, no better things to discover under the lens of your own attention, and no better kind of mind to practice with. The only things needed for mindfulness are a mind to practice with, a willingness to try and stay present, and an interest to meet yourself and your actual experience.

The next time you hear the thought that mindfulness doesn’t apply to you, with the way your life is, your mind is, your circumstances are, notice that thought, and maybe the feeling or sensation that comes along with it. Pay attention to what it feels like in your body to be listening to that thought. Before you know it, the you who can’t practice mindfulness will be practicing mindfulness in its most authentic and powerful form! 

Enough About Me, What Do You Think Of Me?

My 10-year-old was invited to a party this weekend, a camp reunion sleepover given by one of her closest friends. Unfortunately, this same weekend, she has an event that she can’t and doesn’t want to miss—a competition for which she has trained diligently and for many months. But the other little girl is very angry with my daughter and has accused her of being a bad friend and bad person because she won’t give up her event in order to attend the party. She wanted to know why my daughter was doing this to her, and purposely spoiling her event.

This reaction may be age appropriate for 10-year-olds, but too many “grown-ups” behave in a similar fashion—which is definitively not age appropriate.

I was recently at a party with a friend. Knowing that I had to get up early for something important the next day, I left the gathering before midnight. My friend, a woman in her 40s, was furious that I would do that to her. She was having a good time, had met a man she was interested in, and didn’t want to stay there on her own. She felt that my leaving was unkind, and that I should have stayed longer to support her.

At another time, some years ago, after sitting for a full day with an ill friend, I decided to go for a drive to spend some time with myself, which I desperately needed. To this day, that friend tells me that I left her in her time of need, and wasn’t willing to stay with her unconditionally. The fact that I also needed some self-care was and still is experienced as an abandonment and even an aggression against her. The 10 hours spent with her that day, as far as her internal world is concerned, never existed.

Me, Me, and What About Me?

It is very difficult for some people to see anything as happening separate from and not in relation to them. People who suffer with this view of the world experience everything as a reflection and commentary on who they are—an abandonment or affirmation of themselves. Whatever you do, even things that have nothing whatsoever to do with these people, are still somehow either for or against them. Such people simply can’t see anything as not being tethered to them. Sometimes it can be baffling to figure out how your action could possibly have been related to them, for or against, but through this kind of lens, everything you do is indeed about them, even when it makes absolutely no logical sense.

This form of narcissism is in fact quite prevalent in our culture, and very challenging to know how to handle in close relationships.

Weathering the Storm

A painful aspect of being in a relationship with this kind of person: Since nothing can be about you and your life, you end up feeling not seen and not known—invisibilized—except as an object they use to make themselves feel better or worse. The experience is of not really existing at all—you are continually invalidated, not permitted to express yourself as a separate being who might actually have her own experience. Why you might make a particular choice, for yourself, is viewed not only as untrue and absurd, but yet another aggression—against them—that you could dare to think that you have your own internal world, and separate life. Imagine! How could your choices possibly be about you and not them?

It is nearly impossible to feel truly cared by a partner, friend, or relative when that other person is not interested in knowing you in any way other than how you make them feel—about themselves. You might feel liked when your behavior is interpreted as favorable to their self-worth, but this is not the same as feeling genuine friendship or love. In a relationship with this kind of narcissism, it can feel like your life and very self are kidnapped—dis-allowed by the other. In truth, your very existence separate from them is the ultimate betrayal, and what they seek to obliterate. Related to as an object that needs to be either controlled or obliterated, love is a difficult and unlikely endeavor. As a result, such relationships are fraught with profound loneliness, grief and eventually, raging frustration as you fight desperately to be visible and known for who you genuinely are.

Some time ago, I gave a memorial for a close family member. As I was shopping for cookies for the gathering, I reached for the vanillas because my kids enjoy them. Immediately, my mind shot back with the thought that I was choosing vanilla to punish this relative, the one who had died, since she would have chosen chocolate. I waved hello to my old thought tape and bought the vanillas.

Being Yourself, Finally

Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of a relationship with this kind of narcissist is that you come to experience your own life as actually being about the other. You lose touch with your own intentions, as if their narcissistic lens, pointed at you, gradually corrupts even your knowing your own truth, and simultaneously, steals the dignity that comes with that knowing. You not only start changing your behavior, morphing yourself into a deformed system, refraining from doing things that (while not about them) they will experience as about them, but also, you stop believing in your own experience and intention. The fact that your actions are for and about you, not them, stops being completely clear.

You begin to doubt what is really true for you, as you are no longer quite connected to your own truth. In this way, their narcissism acts as a toxin to your connection to self. You may defend that what you are doing is about you and not them, but some part of you stops believing this fully, and the strength behind this knowing is lost. While you may go on fighting to be seen accurately and truthfully, the other has taken away your ability to own and believe this accurate and truthful version of yourself. Your truth (being true) comes to depend on their believing it—being able to prove it to them. Even the struggle for you, they eventually own.

Most important in this sort of relationship is to stay in touch with your own intentions. Rather than defending yourself, proving your own truth—as if you should ever have to—be that separate entity that they refuse to acknowledge. A simple, “I am sorry that you are experiencing what is about me to be about you”, can suffice. Chances are you are not going to get this other person to see you clearly, without an umbilical cord between the two of you. Let the attempt to be seen accurately go, if at all possible. The more you try to be known, the more you threaten your own connection to self.

We all have the right to be the keepers of our truth and no one has the right to determine or corrupt our intentions, to turn our being into an extension of them. With each moment that you are misunderstood and your truth distorted, spend two moments confirming and marinating in what is for you, your actual truth, uncorrupted.

And think carefully as well about whether you want to be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t want to or have the capacity to genuinely know you, as a being unto yourself. Ask yourself if this kind of relationship strengthens your sense of dignity and self-worth, encourages your authentic nature, makes you feel known, understood, loved, or just plain good about yourself. If the answer is no, then what is the best choice for YOU, the choice that is in line with your well-being? Sometimes the only way to honor your separateness is to make the choice to separate.

Has Technology Killed Downtime?

A woman I know is afraid to go to bed at night. She’s not afraid of the dark or of having a nightmare. She’s not afraid of someone breaking into her apartment or of dying in her sleep. What she’s afraid of is open time with herself, the unfocused down time that bedtime brings, time when she is not doing anything specific, not focused on any external something.

Someone else I know described the experience of lying in bed one morning, not having anything particular to get up for, and not being able to "find" anything to really think about. He said he felt like he had nowhere to “put his mind" and as a result, felt like he was going insane. The lack of a focus for his attention sent him into a full-fledged panic attack.

These scenarios may sound strange, but they are more common than you might imagine. With the advent of the digital age, our attention is almost always focused on something. We are playing a game, texting, researching, watching, or talking, but always doing something, with our mind turned toward and engaged with something outside of ourselves. We treat our own undirected attention like a parent might treat a toddler on a long plane ride, frantically shoving activities and videos in front of his face until he either passes out or the ride comes to an end.

Today we share this same fear of our own unentertained adult mind.

The gap, that space between activities, or what we used to call "down time" is disappearing from our lives. Our attention is now almost always narrowed onto a task or activity and we are losing the spaces in which our attention is open, without a specific focus. People say that we are becoming unfocused as a society but in fact we are becoming hyper-focused, always looking at something and never just looking—without a specific object or goal of our gaze.

Open awareness, down time, the gap—whatever you call it—serves an important  purpose in our lives. When I have a problem I can’t solve, I will often go for a walk and drop the problem altogether. Later that day, after not thinking about it for some time, the solution generally appears in my mind. I am not unique in having this experience. Something is actually happening in that down time. The mind is putting things together, making associations, doing a different kind of work, that happens outside our awareness. For many people, it is in these gaps that they have their best flashes of insight, as if we need to take our mind off of something in order to gain access to our intuition and really, to our everything.

So too, the mind needs recess periods in its day—like a child does—when it can just run and play, jump from thing to thing and not have to direct its energy toward any particular object or event. The mind needs to be able to flow freely from thought to thought, or simply rest in no thought. Down time between tasks allows our mind to rest. Gaps in our day give us time to just float about, space out or take a much-needed break from mental activity. This float time then allows us to re-boot our system and come back with renewed juice to bring to the next object of our attention. With our attention flipped on and at something all the time, we become mentally exhausted and while more time is spent focusing on tasks, we in fact become, qualitatively, less productive.

Furthermore, unfocused attention in our day allows us to spend time with ourselves, to make ourselves the focus of our attention. While not playing a game or engaging in a Google search, we can contemplate our own experience, check in, and discover how we are doing in the middle of all this noise, this life. Now, because our attention is always focused on something else, we have ceased to be a destination for our own attention. 

And yet the media says that we are becoming pathological narcissists. Aren’t we focusing more on ourselves than ever? Yes, we are spending far more time reporting on ourselves, focusing on our identity, describing where we’ve been, what we are doing and so on, but at the same time, we are spending far less time actually being with ourselves, inside our own attention, asking and answering to our self. As a result of always having an external focus, we have, sadly, come to view being with ourselves, without something else to focus on, as a void, a panic-inducing non-place.

From a spiritual perspective, the spaces between—between tasks, between thoughts, between breaths, between all the objects of our attention—are profoundly important. It's the space we inhabit during meditation. It's in the spaces between thoughts that we connect with the awareness within which thought happens. It's in this open awareness that we gain a sense of detachment and freedom from the mind. When we lose the ability or opportunity to live in the gaps, we become slaves to the mind, and subsequently terrified of any moment when the mind is not occupied. Gaps then become a kind of death—when we cannot feel our mind’s presence or experience our own presence, as if we cease to exist. On the other hand, a deep and lasting confidence arises when we can tolerate and even enjoy open, undirected space, when being with just our self is not something to be feared.

Breaks from focused attention are beneficial in myriad ways. They bring insight, allow us to solve problems without trying, give our mind a chance to rest, and to play without an agenda. Gaps give us time to spend time with ourselves, to experience our own being, and to know ourselves as more than just what we are doing and thinking. Gaps give us the confidence to stop trying to out-run open space, escape down time, and ultimately, dodge ourselves.

In the digital age, we value action, information, and entertainment, and we are encouraged to keep the mind busy at all times. If we want to create down time, to make space, we have to actively do it. Ironically, creating space in which we can be unfocused now takes focused attention.

On a practical level, you can create down time in very small ways, by taking five minutes every day and consciously resisting the urge to give your mind something to chew on. When your mind tells you it’s time to play a game, email a friend, research a vacation, figure out a work problem, or write a to-do list, just say, "No. Not now." The mind will always search for something to attend to. You however, can practice being present without having an object of that presence, being aware without having to direct your awareness atsomething. Try it in short stretches, and notice what unfolds, and if you feel differently. Or, similarly, take a walk without your phone (or any device) and let your mind just wander, or slip away. Set aside times for an approved space out. Give yourself the gift of the gap, the privilege of the space that used to be built into life but is no longer.

As a result, you may not only feel less brain-weary and mentally fatigued. You may also discover a sense of internal spaciousness, a wider and more panoramic view of life which is not frantic and not dependent on external material to escape an internal void. With enough practice, your own presence may become a place unto itself, and you may discover that it is in the spaces between your objects of attention that you feel most spacious, whole, calm, and ultimately, well. 

Are You Feeding On Your Pain... Past Its Expiration Date?

Intimate relationships include pain, at least every intimate relationship I have ever been in or witnessed. And most, if we’re lucky, include pleasure, too. We cannot change the fact that pain is included in intimacy, but how much pain we endure is, in part, up to us. As a therapist and a wife, I think a lot about how we can decrease the pain that we experience in relationships, and increase the amount of joy and gratitude that we feel.

Once we’ve been in a relationship for some time, most of us have written a plethora of stories about our partners: we have many ideas about what they do that we don’t like, what their problems are, why they are the way they are, how and why they hurt us, and on it goes. Basically, we have figured out what’s wrong with them. Some of our story lines we share with our partners and some we don’t. We could fill volumes with the convictions we have compiled on our partners, most if not all of which we believe to be the truth. Our story lines have a lot to do with what increases our pain in relationships.

When difficulty arises with our partner, we might feel hurt, angry, frustrated, or perhaps a cocktail of all three and more. We might feel intense pain for some time. But then, oddly, we do something which intensifies and extends that pain. You could say we throw gasoline on the fire of pain. The incident or fight is over, in real time, but not for us, not a chance. We’ve still got a long way to go with the story of it. The hurt might have passed, its shelf life in our body over, but we opt to spend days, weeks, sometimes even lifetimes rehashing it in our minds, crafting new stories filled with our partner’s crimes and our grievances, breathing new life into what is in fact ready to pass. If our pain were a child, we would be nursing it long into its adulthood.

The shelf life of most intense feelings is quite short. A strong feeling, which is not fed by our thoughts about it, can pass through us in a rather short time. It is our mind that, counter-intuitively, does not want us to let go of our pain. The mind desperately wants us to pay attention to our pain, and to how any new hurt fits into the larger script that we have written on our partner and the relationship. Perhaps it is the mind’s effort to figure out the pain, to make sense of what seems nonsensical, not understandable. Or maybe the mind believes that if we allow the pain to pass when it has come to its natural end, it is not enough somehow, that we haven’t done the pain justice if we do not extend it by way of our own continued attention. Perhaps the mind believes that we further punish our partner by holding onto and ruminating on the pain they have caused us. Or, maybe the mind wants us to keep chewing on the pain simply because the mind loves a problem; a problem for the mind is like an extravaganza with which to entertain itself. In truth, spending more time re-thinking and rehashing our pain does not serve our pain, or us.

When we start paying attention to our mind, we see that it is always beckoning us to reenter the story of our pain. Something amazing happens, however, when we make the choice to refrain from taking the mind’s bait, resist engaging with such thoughts. Our relationship gets a whole lot better, and feels, suddenly, like it’s happening in the present tense, like we're meeting our partner freshly. I am absolutely not suggesting that we deny pain when it is felt intensely and directly, in the body, but rather that we choose not to extend, intensify and freeze it, keeping it alive in our mind when it (possibly) might not need to be there. Pain is a truth, but if we don't feed it, it has a natural life span. It is we who (often) make pain immortal.

To this end, it is important that we notice when we are actually feeling okay, not in pain, not resentful, not hurt, and we still choose to jump on board a thought train to pain. It is important that we become conscious of this habit to get back in the saddle of hurt. It is an odd choice really, but one that we all make, until we don’t anymore, until we become aware that we are choosing it. 

The next time you catch your mind inviting you to dive into the negative story line of your relationship and your partner, to again crack open the great tome on their failings, politely decline the mind’s invitation. Return to where you are and the breath about to happen. By simply decreasing the amount of time we spend telling ourself the story of what’s wrong, we can profoundly improve the experience we have in our relationships. The more we can refrain from stoking the fire of how we have been hurt, the more room there is to discover how we actually appreciate our partners, and to see them in the moments when all is well. The less we obscure our present moment with the history of our scars, the more possibility there is for new relationship skin to grow.

We need to pay attention to what is actually true for us; to meet ourself and our partner, as freshly as we can in each new moment. We need not go looking for past pain, need not dive into every pain story the mind presents. Simply by choosing to decline the invitation to engage with old pain, we end up feeling a whole lot lighter, happier, more present, and available to love.

Is Anyone Worth Turning Off Your Phone?

A friend of mine is separating from her husband because he cannot separate from his iPhone.

These days, when couples go out to eat together, the first thing they do is pull out their devices, if they are not already in their clutches, and place them on the table between each other. There is nothing stranger than watching two lovers in a dark and quiet restaurant, drinking wine, feeding each other treats, while simultaneously checking every few minutes or so until that darkness and quiet are impaled by the light and buzzing coming from one of their devices. And then, even stranger, the person to whom it belongs actually putting down his wine, unraveling his foot from his partner’s calf and pulling his gaze away from his lover’s in order to check that device—perhaps to find out that his Groupon for a pair of sneakers has now expired.

There are no more tables for two; tables for four are our most intimate encounters—two humans and two devices. In the digital age, we no longer give any one person our full attention. When we are together, even in our most intimate relationships, some part of us is not there, not present. We are anticipating, subtly and not so subtly awaiting the next alert, waiting for something else to appear on the screen. The message is that the person in front of us is not enough, or not enough to warrant our turning off what else is possible, the "what else" with which our smartphone constantly beckons.

When our phone or our partner’s phone is on the table with us, it is there, a part of the encounter. We can’t fully settle in to what is happening in the relationship. Some part of our consciousness is on alert for signals coming in. Even when not answering the chime or bugle that calls out for our attention, we often pick up the phone, check what the call was about, place the phone back on the table in its proper place, and only then return to our partner. This whole process interrupts the experience with another person. There is a re-entry into the conversation, and the person who is now returned to feels different with that interruption. At some level, she feel less important, that her company is not deserving of exclusivity.

I notice with my psychotherapy clients that what people do next is determined by their own psychology. Some try to be more interesting so as to make themselves worthy of their partner's turning off his device. Others retreat into insecurity and loneliness. Still others just get on their own device, and find their own way out of the moment and the relationship, thereby balancing the disconnection. At this moment in history, we are changing psychologically as we generate new defense mechanisms to manage our own devaluation in one another’s lives and the downgrading of our place on partners' priority list. However we compensate or don’t, that phone on the table, lighting up, sounding off, and just being a presence, making it a foursome not a twosome, fundamentally alters the relationship and its intimacy. Even when it is not delivering an email, the phone at the table is conveying a message of enormous meaning.

Attention is a profoundly important method by which we show someone that we matter in each other’s lives. The gaze of a person really with us, not distracted, not elsewhere, fully here, is a gift of the most divine substance. There is a flow of energy, an energetic circle that occurs when two people are wholly with each other, undistracted, fully landed. In this circle it is possible for both individual “I”s to disappear, and for us to discover a third entity—the energy and flow of the relationship itself, without separation. This happens when both parties agree to be present and make the choice to close the door to the potential “what elses” and “what’s nexts” that call out from the blinking lights of technology. When we include our devices in our intimate interactions, we disrupt the circle of intimacy and, with it, the possibility of two “I”s becoming one “we.” When our phones are on the table with us, between us, we remain a group of individual entities. We don’t have to risk joining each other, slipping into the experience and our partner, and leaving ourself behind. At the same time, sadly, we don’t get to leave ourself behind, to join the experience and our partner, and taste the real sweetness of intimacy.

Just as we downgrade the importance of our human friends and award equal status to our technological companions, another trend is also contributing to the loss of intimacy and value in our relationships: With the explosion of technology, we have lost the distinction between public and private space. We no longer have places where we are unreachable. There are no longer times and places where the outside world is not allowed, special places that are for the special people in our lives, not everyone, that add to the sense of importance of those private spaces and the relationships within them.

Now, always on, always available to everyone through our devices, always interacting with the public through social media, we don’t assign a special importance to those in our private world. With technology going everywhere with us, the public is now as important as the private.

If we still want private space to feel different from public space, intimate relationships to feel different from non-intimate relationships, it is up to us to separate the two and treat them differently. We need to have times and places where we are not with everyone, but rather, only with those who really matter. The choice to deem certain people and places worthy of turning off the “what else?” button infuses such people and places with meaning. The system delivers what we put into it: If we treat someone as important, they become important. If we treat them as on a par with the public, no more important than any business associate, fundraiser, or acquaintance, they will assume that generic value in our life. Ultimately, our behavior determines the depth of our relationships and the amount of nourishment that we receive from them.

The next time you go out with, or stay home with, someone you care about, turn the smartphone off, turn the tablet off, turn it all off, and better yet, put it away—out of sight. Make the decision to make private time different. Take the risk that for the two hours you will be at the restaurant, you won’t be reached. Ask yourself: Is what I am checking for really as important as this person in front of me? This system, of being in one place with one other person, worked for eons, before technology made it something strange, before it became something that we need to consciously choose, that goes against the social stream. The small act of simply refraining from putting your phone on the table, or dare I suggest leaving it off altogether, has the power to create an entirely different, more intimate experience.

There are so many things that we can do to make our lives better. Some are quite difficult and require a lot of effort. But this one, this tiny choice to put away our devices when with a friend, has the power to improve our life in a way that far outweighs the effort required. The cost-benefit ratio is staggering.

Is Technology Worsening Our Basic Restlessness?

The information age is to the human mind what the age of debauchery was to the human id. Our mind, jacked up on information, images, games, communication and all the other stuff that technology provides, is becoming an impulsive beast that has to be fed continuously. Previous to this explosion in technology, we, the larger awareness behind the beast, acted as its master, and determined when, if, and how it was fed. Because the mind wanted to research travel deals at midnight did not mean we had to get up and do it. Now however it’s flipped; the beast has got us in the cage and it is we who run around behind it serving its continual demands.

Because the mind has grown so strong and powerful inside us, it has become harder to turn the lens on the mind itself. The more technology the mind consumes, the bigger presence it becomes and consequently, the more it obscures the light of awareness. Unfortunately, we need to be aware of what our mind is up to. Our awareness protects and separates us from the mind’s tsunami of desires, and from our own susceptibility to them. The more food the mind gets, the more it reinforces its own power, telling us that it is justified in getting so much, that it is a good thing for it, for us to be so stuffed with stuff and focused on something external all the time. As the process continues, there is less room for dissention on our part. How we feel about the mind’s dictatorship eventually becomes irrelevant.

Technology, with its enormous opportunities for distraction and being elsewhere, is the mind’s strongest ally in keeping us out of the present moment. You could say that technology is the mind’s partner in its detestation and fear of the present moment. Technology makes it far easier for the mind to get what it wants in this regard, that is, to get us out of now. But unfortunately, for us, the larger awareness behind the mind, taking us out of now also takes us out of the only place where we can actually experience wellbeing.

The mind’s comfort zone, its sweet spot, is always the past or future. It likes to think about what happened already, enjoying the thoughts, ruminations, regrets, lessons and the rest of what comes with the past. So too, the mind relishes (and gets to play a starring role) in a potential future, in thinking about what will happen, what needs to be done to make it happen, what can’t happen, and all the rest of the delights and fears that such a thinking party offers. For the mind, the past and the future are rich with goodies. The present however is a different story. When we are fully in the present moment, we are simply being—in whatever is happening; life unfolds before us and we are just part of it. Being here, now, we are not doing anything to make life happen, not deciding how to feel about it, writing the story of it, or making plans for it to continue or change. Just being is something that the mind ferociously resists. Understandably, as there is no place or role for the mind in such a non-doing place. With no role to play and nothing to do to make being happen, the mind senses danger, fearing that it will cease to exist if not needed to do life for us. If life is candy, the mind wants to be there to taste the candy, to tell us about the candy. But to just be the candy, be life? That would mean that there would be no mind there anymore to experience life for us. To this possibility, the mind cries a resounding “No!”

With its immediate, easy and instantly gratifying nature, technology encourages and supports the mantra of “What’s next?” Technology makes it possible to just keep moving, from one pleasurable and titillating experience to another, never having to come back here to be with “just” ourselves, “just” now. And so we do… just keep moving… from one source of entertainment to another. If we are not doing the next thing we are looking for the next thing to do. “What else is there?” has replaced “What’s here?” With our devices always ready, and it now societally acceptable to be “on” them all the time, that is to be somewhere else all the time, we no longer need to meet the present moment nor even notice our basic restlessness or discomfort with ourselves and being here.

We simply give the mind what it wants, medicate the monkey, throw it a toy, and move on. Unfortunately, knowing and being interested in our own mind, our own state of being, in how we are doing in the middle of this wildly changing world, is a large part of what makes us feel grounded and centered, two main components of wellbeing. This curiosity is disappearing as technology makes our own consciousness increasingly irrelevant.

As technology strengthens our ability to check out of now, it also strengthens our mistaken belief that somewhere else there is a better moment we could be living. The more we escape from the present moment, the more firm grows our belief that the present moment is lacking something, which then leads us to keep searching for yet another better moment. We are more convinced that there is some destination, some place perhaps we can find through technology, anywhere but here, that would provide us with satisfaction—some moment, some activity but not now and not this activity, where we could finally give up the search for a place to be and at last, just land. Technology not only provides us with the means by which to disappear from the moment but simultaneously, it supports us in blaming the moment and its inadequacy for our disappearance. As a result, we continue our futile search for a moment that will finally be right for us to inhabit.

Technology is rich with opportunities to expand positively. At the same time, it is rich with opportunities to expand negatively. We need to remain conscious of not just how we are growing for the better, but also how we are growing in ways that don’t serve us. We need to pay attention to what we are giving up as we welcome technology into our lives, and set it a permanent place at our table. Some of what we are losing is fundamental to our basic wellbeing, and may not be remembered or return if we agree to let it go.

Wellbeing can only exist in the moment. Technology encourages us to depart the moment. Wellbeing can only exist if we can be with ourselves and stay mindful of how we are. Technology leads us to disconnect from ourselves and place our focus on a continual stream of something else-s. Wellbeing requires that we not be dependent upon any substance to maintain our equanimity. Technology turns us into addicts who need the drug of technology in order to maintain a basic sense of okayness. Wellbeing is built on an experience of the present moment as whole and enough, a place where we can land. Technology creates an experience of the present moment as lacking, and not a place that is possible to inhabit—an experience that is the antithesis of wellbeing.

As we absorb the positive aspects of technology, we need to stay fiercely aware of its power to steer us away from our true needs. We must remain mindful of our own minds and careful not to be seduced into the unconsciousness that technology makes possible. Technology is powerful in its ability to form alliances with and strengthen aspects of the mind that profoundly challenge and disrupt our capacity to be well, to feel grounded, calm, centered, connected, in a word—good. If we stop being diligent with our self-awareness and choose to surrender into the temptation of pleasure and avoidance, to disappear into the addiction of distraction that technology offers, technology will end up leading us away from what makes us fundamentally well. Let us not slip down the rabbit hole because we can, because it’s easy and maybe even because it’s our mind’s nature. What is to be gained by staying awake, the sweetness of conscious wellbeing, far outweighs any game of "Candy Crush."

Being In the Moment When We Don't Like the Moment

I always giggle when I see the photograph that accompanies blogs or articles on “being present.” The image, nine times out of ten, is of a person (usually a woman) sitting cross-legged on a beach, looking out at an ocean or other body of water, with the sun setting or rising in front of her. The implication is that this peaceful beautiful scene is what presence feels or looks like.

The truth is, if life were a beach at sunset we might not have to work so hard at being present “in” it. If what we were hearing was the lapping of the waves against the sand, we might want to listen to the sound of now.

But what happens when what we are hearing is the siren of the ambulance directly behind us when there’s nowhere to change lanes? 

If what we were smelling was the fresh salt air coming off the sea, we might want to breathe in what is here. But what happens when we are smelling the cleaning solution the gym attendant is spraying on the machine we are using, even though we are the only one in the place? 

If what we were feeling was the warm sand against our toes, we might want to dip into the present sensation. But what happens when what we are feeling is the cold wet slush soaking our pants as the bus wheels past?

If what we were seeing were the pinks and blues of a glorious sunset, we might want to keep our eyes open to what’s now. But what happens when what we are looking at is a homeless person hunkered down for the night under filthy blankets on an icy sidewalk?

How can we be “in” the present moment when we don’t like the present moment?

Life includes experiences we want and ones we don’t. We are better at being present in the ones we want, and we need more practice staying in the moments we don’t want. Many people ask me why we would even try and be present in the bad moments. Our assumption is that by agreeing to be present in what we call the bad moments, we are somehow agreeing to them, surrendering to them, and giving up all efforts to change them. We believe that, in order to keep things good in our life, we must brace against, ignore, and reject anything not good. This is an incorrect assumption with profound consequences.

Agreeing to be present in the hard moments is simply agreeing that what is happening is happening, and that we are in it. We accept that this is what we are living right now, whether we like it or not. We say, “Yes this is so and yes this is hard.”

This “Yes,” this acceptance, is fundamentally different than “Yes, we want this.” When we accept what is so right now, we give up the fight against what is supposed to be, and the idea that what is happening should not be happening, and certainly not be happening to us. When we give ourselves permission to be “in” the moments that don’t feel good—which may even feel like hell—ironically, we experience a kind of wholeness. There is a profound completeness, you could almost call it a joy, in being able to experience life fully, in all its presentations—even the ones we despise.

Furthermore, as long as we are “checking out” on the moments that we don’t like, we are an extra step away from being able to change them. It is counter-intuitive, but until we fully accept what is happening we cannot move on; we reject what is and as a result, what is gets stuck. When we settle into, and accept our starting place, we plant our feet in the place from which we can launch change. Scary though it may feel, agreeing to be here doesn’t mean agreeing to be here forever, it just means agreeing to be here in this moment, right now.

The fact is, whether we agree to being here, in “it,” or not, “it” still is; our rejection or acceptance of “it” does nothing to “its” is-ness. When we are present in the hard moments, we are released from the primary cause of suffering, which is refusing to be where we are, rejecting our very life. Joined with the moment, we stop wasting our energy, futilely demanding that what is so not be so. When we enter where we are, pretty or not, we can at least stop bracing against our life, stop expending the effort that is required to keep us out of now. Once in the moment, inside our actual experience, we can begin the constructive work of creating change.

It is also important to remember that when we settle into the more challenging moments of life, we do not lose awareness of how we feel or the desire for change. We don’t suddenly become unconscious.

We still don’t want it to be the way it is, but that not wanting is simply included in the “what is,” along with the wet slush and the ambulance siren. Our dislike of the moment is part of and not a contradiction to our presence. Being able to be in the moments we don’t want is a challenge that requires different skills than being in the moments we want (which also takes skill). Experiencing what is, as it is, along with our dislike of it, forms a base of compassion for ourselves—that we are living this hard moment and it is painful and we want it to be otherwise and it is what is so right now. All are true—all at once. This self-compassion, of diving into the whole of what is, regardless of the difficulty that inspires it, is always healing and always carries the feel of a loving embrace.

Life presents all of us with the opportunity to be present “off the beach”—on a small scale, when the skies open up and we have no umbrella; on the larger, as we sit with our parentdying in the hospital, or any one of the infinite human hardships we face. Life gives us endless chances to practice being “in” what is when what is is not what we want. To be able to be “in” the moment in all its forms is to experience the full depth and scope of our human existence. To embrace what is happening, how we feel about it, how we wish it weren’t so, how we are going to try and change it and everything else, all at once, without having to reject any of it…this is what it means to be fully alive! Even when we are not at the beach, we are here, tasting life, and that in and of itself is the real gift!

Because You Feel It Doesn't Mean You Have to Be It

Mindfulness, halleluja!  What liberation, to become aware of our own mind. With all the recent attention on mindfulness, we are getting better at being able to watch our minds in action, notice the thoughts it generates, the stories it tells us. We are starting to understand that it is simply the nature of the mind to fire thoughts, randomly and ceaselessly, whether we want to hear them or not. The fact that this happens is not our failing, just the nature of the beast called mind. So too, we are starting to realize that thoughts don’t necessarily contain the truth… or even anything particularly interesting.

Thoughts may not always be true, but emotion… now that’s an entirely different thing… or so we think! Emotions must be taken very seriously. Emotions arise out of our lived experience, and thus must contain some fundamental element of truth. When we start observing our emotions however, we realize that emotions fire almost as randomly as the chatter we call thoughts. One moment we are flooded with icky feelings, suddenly back in a story from middle school. The next moment the channel changes and a new movie plays. For no reason, we find ourselves in a tsunami of bliss as the image of summer camp wafts into consciousness. 

Emotions follow thoughts and are made of thought stories (that we believe) about whatever experience we are re-living or imagining. Our emotions are made of bundles of thoughts, and contain the truth that our thoughts have written. We relate to our feelings as fixed and entirely trustworthy entities, and yet, like weather moving through the sky, our feelings are often as unreliable and changeable as everything else our mind puts out. When we stop romanticizing our emotions, as fundamental truths that arise out of the all-knowing heart, we can notice them as another byproduct of our wild and temperamental minds.

Further complicating our ability to put our feelings in front of the witness, we believe that our emotions are fundamental to who we are. We think that if we feel sad, we are sad, if we feel unworthy, we are unworthy, and so on. The combination of our belief in the truth of our feelings along with our propensity to identify with them, makes emotion the hardest aspect of the mind to become mindful of, the trickiest play of the mind to get behind and see clearly.

In order to be mindful of our emotions, some part of us must have the ability to watch our feelings, be with our feelings, and feel for them… all without actually becoming them. Can we relate with our sadness without feeling entirely sad, be with our sense of unworthiness from a place that doesn’t share the unworthiness? This would imply that some part of us could remain separate from and larger than even our strongest emotions. You might ask, If I am not made of my emotions, then what am I made of? Yes, maybe I am not made of my thoughts, but how could I possibly not be what I feel? What else if more fundamental to me?

The process of gaining perspective on or un-sticking from our emotions is further complicated by the fact that we are emotionally attached to our emotions. As a friend described, My feelings contain a piece of my heart. I feel like my feelings are my children, I guess I love them in some way. Noticing our emotions would mean that we would have to let go of them just a little bit, at least enough to be able to be with them. Being with our feelings can feel like we are abandoning our children, severing the merger between us and them. Indeed, this sense of loss can present a real challenge.

In truth however, we can best serve our strongest emotions by offering them our own kindness and compassion, and loosening our stranglehold on them (and thus theirs on us). In order to bring true comfort to painful feelings we have to be the larger parent to the wounded-ness in us, to be with our feelings, but not of them. We experience a deep sense of relief as we create a little bit of space between us and our feelings, allowing our feelings to absorb our company rather than our identity.

We want and need a separate grown up, a compassionate presence that can protect and lead us out of our suffering, even as our suffering is screaming for us to stay in it and as it. Sometimes, we need something or someone to represent a different possibility, to sit beside us and not be where we are. We can be that something or someone for ourselves. Our emotional pain, young as it often is, lacks the wisdom to know that we do indeed need to unstick from it a little bit, to be just to the side of it, in order to actually make it feel better. First, we must be mindful that such emotions are happening within our awareness, and second, we must bring our empathic company to that which we witness. Such company is a gift of kindness to ourselves, and not the abandonment that we mistakenly believe. This awareness is the more evolved wisdom that both blooms from and gives life to genuine wellbeing.

Mindfulness includes not just awareness of thought, but also awareness of our deepest emotions. At the farthest end, awareness can include even the very sense of the “I” who witnesses such phenomenon, but more on that later… Practice mindfulness not only with your What’s for dinner? thoughts, but with the emotions that you feel most attached to and identified with. Ultimately, having some space between yourself and your feelings liberates you from the deepest bondage of the mind. The good news is that you can in fact feel your feelings, the energy that they contain, without actually having to be them or be swallowed by them.

!0 Best Practices For Being Present

By now, most of us know that now—here—is where we’re supposed to be. We get it that we are not living our life fully if we are always lost in thought, tumbling through a story about the past or future. But how do we do this thing called being present? How do we actually bring ourselves into a state of here-ness, deposit ourselves into this moment, so that we can truly be in our own life?

What follows is a list of practices, tools, for being here. The fact is, we can’t really ever be anywhere but where we are, but our attention, our mind, can indeed travel elsewhere. The tools that follow are designed to sync up your attention with your body, so that the two are in the same place, like a floating photograph that moves into its frame. The practices I offer can be used for as little or as long as you like at a stretch, and are meant to be practiced several or more times throughout the day. The practices are like gravity boots that pull you into now, and plant you in the place where you actually are.

When it comes to techniques, we are all made differently and what lights one person’s world on fire might not even heat the embers under another’s feet. Some of us respond to visualizations, some sounds, some felt senses, some ideas, and the list goes on. The important thing is to try out different practices, and notice what they do for and with your own presence. Notice which techniques hold the drop you out of your mind and into your body, ricochet you out of whatever story you are lost in. Once you know what works, you can create a now toolbox from which to draw. It is important to make such practices a habit, to schedule these techniques like you would important appointments, and initiate them before you have missed out on a whole day of now-s, a whole day of your actual life. The real key is practice, for that there is no substitute, and no moment better than now--to meet the now.

The Now Toolbox

1) “Am I here?”

At its core, to be here requires to NOT be somewhere else. The first tool therefore is to pay attention to where your attention actually is. Ask yourself, “Where am I right now?” or simply, “Am I here?” Make this simple but profound question a habit. Notice too where you go to check for the answer. The place that you consult is also the destination, presence itself!

The Body: The physical body is always in the present moment. The body cannot and does not seek to be anywhere but here, unlike the mind, which wants to be anywhere else. We can make use of the body’s always-present nature, and use it as a vehicle to come back here. By dropping into the body, and experiencing it directly, we hitch a ride straight into now.

2) Sound

Tune into just the sounds that are happening around you right now. Don’t go to the mind to name them or explain how you feel about them or why they’re happening. No effort is needed. Just listen, allow your ears to receive, and pay attention to this.

3) Body Sensation

Feel the sensations that are happening inside your body right now. Again, don’t name the sensations (twinges, anxiety, exhaustion, pain etc.) and don’t explain why they are happening. Just feel them directly as sensations. Notice too that they just happen, without effort.

4) Breath

There is an expression, “God is as close as the next breath.” Similarly, we are always just a breath away from presence, and we can always catch a ride to here on our next breath, simply by paying attention to it. The tool then is to feel your breath, pay attention to the sensation of the breath moving through you. Notice that without doing anything, your body is breathing itself, breathing you. Pay attention to the gaps between breaths, and the space of waiting for the next breath to happen. Get intimate with the entire breathing miracle occurring within you.

5) Inside and Outside

Bring your attention to what you are seeing right now. Notice what is here in front of you. Next, add to your awareness what you are hearing, the sounds that are being received by your ears. Hold both at once. And, then, still maintaining awareness of your seeing and hearing, add in the sensations that are happening inside your body. Hold the awareness of all three simultaneously. Ask yourself, “Who is it that is aware of both the inside and outside?”

6) Paying Attention to Mind

Turn your lens back on itself. Pay attention to what your mind is doing right now, listen to the thoughts that it is generating, the chatter it is chattering. Do not get involved in or respond to the contents, just observe your own mind in action, without doing anything about it. Put yourself in the audience to your own show. Ask yourself, “To whom are these thoughts appearing?” 

7) Widening Your View

Silence — listen for the silence that sits under the noise of mind. Find the sound of universal silence out of which the noise arises.

Stillness — feel for the stillness that exists behind the endless movements of mind — thoughts, feelings and sensations. Experience this deep stillness, undisturbed by that which moves through it.

Spaciousness — imagine that your thoughts and feelings are like weather appearing in a big sky of consciousness. Open your view wide, and wider still. Sense the infinite space in, around and behind the thoughts and feelings, the open sky through which the weather is passing. Shift your attention from the objects moving through your consciousness, to the vastness that contains them.

8) Feeling Presence

Close your eyes and feel the sensation of your own physical presence, your body’s weight, and existence. Bring your attention to the feeling of your body being here, just being. Drop into the particular sensation that is “I am,” “I exist.”

9) No Next

Remove next—imagine that there is no next event, next task, next person or next anything to get to. Invite yourself to stop preparing or getting ready for something else to come. Deliberately remove all elses. Meet now with nowhere and nothing else still to get to.

10) The End and the Beginning

Imagine that these are the last few moments of your life in this body, as you. Drop into that fundamental sense of you-ness. Feel the you that has always been here — from a little child until now, still here. Dip into this unchanging feeling of being you, which has remained while all else —thoughts, feelings, situations, body, beliefs, etc. have passed. Feel the you that is immune to time and the very ground of your being.

Each of these practices holds the power to boomerang us back into this present moment. Discover what works for you and then make these practices a part of your daily life!  They are called practices because they are to be practiced! Even a few moments, consistently, can change your life. If we are not here, quite literally we are not here — not in our life. We are missing in action, lost in a story that exists only in our own mind. The life we are living is already dead, a memory of something that already happened, or a fantasy of a hypothetical future. Without presence, we are in a life that doesn’t actually exist.

Ironically, ours is a society obsessed with FOMO. And yet, many of us miss out on the most important thing of all, our own life. Seems we ought to be worrying less about missing the next party and more about missing existence. Every moment from which we are absent is a profound loss, particularly when you consider the brevity of our stay here. Build your now toolbox and practice, practice and then practice some more. The benefits of such a practice are nothing short of life itself.