The Precious Present
A few weeks ago, on my birthday, I woke up to a phone call from one of my closest friends. After she finished harmoniously serenading me with, “Happy Birthday!” she asked me, “What is the intention you want to set for your special day?” I thought about it for a few moments and responded,
For years, I viewed the whole concept of “being present” as one of those spiritual phrases that people, including myself, talked about a lot but really weren’t sure how to achieve or maintain. Even though at times I would try to convince myself that I was being present by working on my to-do list, completing my daily tasks, or even having a conversation about the importance and benefits of being present, the fact is all of these were just good-looking facades that created the illusion of being present but actually served as a distraction to truly attaining this state of being.
Many of us spend most of our time miles away from where we are. We dwell on the past, trying to make sense of something we will probably never understand, wishing an outcome had been different, or beating ourselves up. We overthink a past situation and wonder,”Why?” When we’re not focused on the past, we fantasize or try to forecast or manage the future. We fight with the negative internal dialogue looping around in our minds or we just totally check out, burying ourselves in our work or numbing ourselves out with food, alcohol, TV, technology, exercise or some other “drug of choice.”
It does not matter which of these levels of consciousness your mind is dwelling in. The reality is that you nay be missing the moment that is happening now…the present. I am not saying that we shouldn’t revisit our past to learn from it and use it to inform our actions in the present. And yes, we want to have an inspiring vision of the future in order to propel us forward and inform our choices but many of us get stuck in these two states of mind.
In her book The 21 Day Consciousness Cleanse, Debbie Ford defines being present as “being here, completely here, right this moment…Harnessing the power of the present means having your full awareness on the task at hand and merging with the moment.”
The good news is that being present is a choice! At any moment we can choose our level of consciousness. At any moment we can choose which space of awareness we are living in, including the past, present, future, distracted, checked out, distracted, or totally numb. Transformation is a shift in consciousness! When you choose to veer off of the level of consciousness that you have been operating from and move to a different level of consciousness, your vibration shifts, your life and the world looks different, and there are all new choices available to you.
I know for me, when I set the intention on my birthday to be present, I consciously chose to look at what was around me in that moment, not back at what could have been or forward to what might or might not be. I was awake and tasting the deliciousness of all that was in my life. I was overflowing with love and the realization of how lucky and blessed I truly am. And, as Debbie says in The 21 Day Consciousness Cleanse:
If you want to give yourself the greatest gift for your birthday or every moment of every day, then I recommend the precious present. It is a gift of love and the miracles of the moment.
Transformational Action Steps
(1) Practice being completely entrenched in each moment. If you are listening to someone speak, hear every word. If you are showering, feel the water. If you are eating, taste each bite. If you are hiking, stop to look at the scenery.
(2) When you find you have drifted into the past or future, consciously make a choice to shift your state of awareness and bring it back to the present.
(3) Really dwell in this conversation and allow yourself to notice and journal about where your thoughts go, the conversations and actions that exist in each space in time, and the impact that your focus has on your emotions and choices.
(4) If you want to really delve deeper into this conversation of choices and levels of consciousness then join us for Every Choice Matters which you can do from the comfort of your own home starting September 29th and The Shadow Process November 13th to November 15th in Los Angeles.
