Keeping a present mind nowadays is like a joke! A joke that we laugh about, we like to experience the benefit of it. We spend time to talk about but we do not believe if it is true or if it can be done.
Time is really fast these days, and we all know that time is important. All of us are spending time, some are spending time wisely and some are just letting it pass. But in general, we are living a fixed 24hour day period in a day. In order to live we try to do all the necessary things we do in life by the minute. Mostly we sleep, wake up, we eat and travel to work, we spend most of the time working so we can live a descent life we wanted. We want everything to be time saver, we like everything in an instant. We live a life that we often think that 24hours a day is not enough. We are lucky that we can catch up this fast paced lives by the aid of our technology. Time is precious so we keep on planning ahead of time what will be our next task be it in work or with our loved one. Our mind is busy, we think so much about the future while thinking about the past as our guidelines. We all understand these because our lives depends on money, time, material things, power and so on. Because of this we do not know who we really are. We are just humans running in autopilot. We only enjoy life in a brief moment while we do the things we love. After those brief moments, we go back to what is the norm, we keep our mind busy so we can continue to live. Living our lives nowadays has full of sacrifices, mostly we sacrifice ourselves, we keep our true selves not in control of our lives. We live in past and future time zones. Most of the time, we do it on purpose. We only live with present mind or our true selves if we only want to take a break or rest.
How do you know if you are living your life with the control of your true self? The answer is if we MAXIMIZE living our lives with PRESENCE OF MIND.
How many of you take a bath today and you just took a shower and get the job done? I guess that you does not enjoyed it. But who among you took a shower and experience the refreshing feeling of the shower? Being glad that you have a water to use for bath. Have you felt the water touched your skin and noticed that your physical senses is working? I am not saying that you need to take long hours of shower. Just normal time for shower but how did you do it? Do you have a present mind doing it or your mind is busy somewhere else while taking a bath?
How many of you just ate your lunch just to fill your stomach because your hungry? I bet you did not enjoy your GOD's blessings. If you eat while your mind is present, enjoying your blessings, feeling with your taste buds all the combination of taste of the food your are eating. I guess that the experience about eating will be different.
How many of you spent time with your love ones while thinking other things like your work, thinking your plans after spending your "QUALITY TIME" with your love ones. Do you think you did enjoy your time with them while your mind is wandering somewhere else? If you spend your time with them with your PRESENT MIND, absolutely your experience will be different. And you will truly say that the QUALITY TIME with your family or love ones are well spent.
How many of you remembered when you have your first date with your love ones? Have you remembered that you feel euphoria? You feel that TIME STOPPED. Because you really liked him/her and your time as a dating couple is limited, you did not waste it by enjoying every moment of it. You even hold hands while walking even you are not talking you felt bliss. Your mind is present that time. You are living your life at present moment and you are enjoying it.
Why do you think we enjoy some of the simple things we do in life, so simple we underestimate them and labeled them as none sense. We need to open our minds, we have unlimited potential to be happy and contented with our lives. If we are happy and our mind is present we cannot think of any negative thoughts towards others, we will naturally follow what JESUS have told us "TO LOVE ONE ANOTHER AS I HAVE LOVED YOU". Our world will be the "heaven" or paradise that we are waiting for if everybody is happy and contented at present moment.
You might ask me that most of us cannot sacrifice not to think some future plans because this is necessary for us to be able to live our lives. Of course we cannot avoid that because we also need to survive by occupying your mind with your job. So I might suggest that we try MEDITATION.
At this moment if somebody heard the word meditation, we really do not know about this and we think it is hard and needs some stretching and acrobatic moves just to perform this. I, also got confuse about this word before. If this word comes to my mind, my mind thinks about yoga, fasting, stretching, breathing techniques, etc etc. But I learned about this in some of the books I have read before that meditation is just STOP THINKING or QUIETING THE MIND. I just felt the "Aha!" moment, I want to say eureka! Meditation = Stop thinking. I just got confused because of all the other types of meditation we can see on the internet, all of them is a practice of focus on how to quiet the mind and literally to stop thinking.
If we try meditation (quieting the mind) we might find it impossible because our mind is so busy with thought patterns. But there is no harm in trying, just try to find a comfortable position whether eyes closed or open and just leave your mind blank for a few minutes, you will be surprise of all the images and voices you can hear and see in your head. Some inner voice you can hear in your mind are talking to you, sometimes they are just giving instructions about your plans for the next few hour. If these thought pattern arises, just do not hold on it and let it pass and try again to blank our mind, in time and practice you will be able to quiet your mind. We are not talking about becoming crazy here because of the voices you hear. Mostly people call this voice of thought patterns the EGO MIND.
The following written below is an exerpt from an article written by sabrina.
"The ego loves the outer path. It's deceptive in it's workings by distracting our focus from our own "inner path" of salvation to the outer path of projection. The ego loves to focus on what others are doing and is full of rigid opinions and beliefs based on the duality of right and wrong. The ego has a limited belief system and loves to control, shame and belittle others with egoic dogma and man made rules, all the while, building itself up so it can feel better. But the ego never feels better ~ it must be fed ~ it has an insatiable appetite to control, pass judgment and keep you from your higher wisdom.
The ego is the inner opponent we must all become aware of so we can overcome it. The ego creates a filter that distorts the way our mind perceives everything. It literally creates spiritual blindness and keeps us stuck in limited thinking and separation consciousness. The ego places a veil of illusion or a veil of amnesia over our minds keeping us from accessing our higher wisdom and truth. Evil which is "live" spelled backwards is also the "veil" that blocks us from maintaining a strong connection with our Spiritual Self which is our true source of nourishing life force energies. The more spiritual energies we access ~ through meditation ~ the more refined, neutral and non dualistic our ego becomes. ~ Sabrina
If our mind is busy in past and future timezones, mostly our mind and our lives are controlled by an egoic mind. If we live our lives mostly with present mind through meditation few minutes a day, prayer and by becoming aware in all the things we do in our everyday lives, we are living with our TRUE SELVES we will know who we really are. So it is your decision whether you want to live your lives controlled by your TRUE SELF or controlled by EGO MIND. You have your freewill. Do want to enjoy life, be at peace and be happy? You must know the REAL YOU, always have a present mind.
"If you correct your mind, the rest of your life will fall into place" - Lao Tzu
Enjoy your LIFE and Be Happy c",.)