Live in the moment. It is where eternity is. This idea, often proposed throughout history by prophets, philosophers, and poets, is not a new idea.
If you center your thoughts on the past, you are not alive in the moment. If you worry too much about the future, because of some mistakes you made in the past, you are not alive in the moment. We far too often let what no longer IS, determine what we do now.
This is a huge indication, that whatever your wrong choices may have been, rather than learning from them and being thankful for the lessons, you are clinging to an insecure image of yourself. If you did something ridicules on stage in the fourth grade, it should have nothing what so ever to do with your talents of going on stage now, except perhaps that you learned from the experience, and are going to be that much more fantastic at your next public appearance.
Another example is how phobias are born. If you had a really bad experience on a plane, or with a spider, or the neighbor’s dog, or on a carnival ride, do you let that past experience take away what ever pleasures are to be gained now? Would you avoid flying off for a family reunion or vacation, learning how awesome and wonderful spiders are, or not bond with a dog that could save your life one day, or never go to the county fair because you associate every Ferris wheel with impending doom? This would be a loss.
Putting your thoughts in the moment attracts people, and creates bonds. If you brood about your past, your divorce, your alcoholic child hood, your Nazi sister, you are not giving full attention to the people who are around you right now. This is not to say you should not examine trauma, but always examine it forthrightly, and with the knowledge, “This is not going to hurt or break me now, it is something I survived. I take that strength and courage into every situation I encounter.”
Some people want to tell their sad and hopeless story to everyone to be validated. Do you want to be validated as a loser, a whiner, a victim? No, if you are mature, you want to be validated as someone who has moves forward from all those negative things.
Living in the moment also opens your senses to the miraculous. If the beauty of a tree just reminds you of the old growth fir that they cut down when they paved over your little village, you are not giving your full attention to the new tree before you today.
Smell it, taste it, take in its sweeping branches, and see the life it supports. Hear the birds sing, see the buds bloom, or leaves fall, see the squirrels, feel the breeze brushing against it, the shade it creates, the insects, breathe the oxygen it produces.
When we open our senses to the tree, and every other living miracle or system of miracles, we are much more likely to feel the life energy that is occurring right now, and right here. We are also much more grateful to it, and we will live our lives in a way that is more attune to the cycles of birth, death, and nature that allow us to live.
Wake up to the present moment, and think to yourself, the day only dawns to which we are awakened too, and you will find life is always ever changing, beautiful and most of all, right here, in this moment.
