Grounding Yourself In the Present Moment

Living in the present moment might seem like a nihilistic philosophy, but the truth is that the present moment can be used to benefit in the future. Nihilists don't look for benefits in the future, they only seek pleasure, that's their way of life, very tiring and pointless. The faster you take action, the faster the truth you want to benefit from can become your reality. And the only moment you can take action in is the now, the present. By taking action I mean "What you do". That is the real action you are taking for something. You can only take action if you are aware of the action you're taking, otherwise everything is automatic. You cannot approach a beautiful woman if there isn't one there and just by thinking about doing it, or simply planing, it won't help you in any way. What you think, you become. But it's not just by thinking that you become. Because what you think makes you do the things you do, which at the deep core of human nature is for selfish reasons and what you do makes you who you really are. Going back to the example. By thinking of approaching beautiful women, you become a man who thinks about approaching women. Thinking is what you do, instead of doing what you think. The reason for that is fear and fear is not present in the focused mind, a mind grounded in the present moment. Fear only exists in our thoughts of the future. Benefiting from being grounded in the present moment can help you see what you need to do, why you need to do it and by grounding yourself in the present moment, you can control the outcome of every situation and control the reality you have influence over. But you can only influence by doing, you cannot influence by thinking of influencing. By doing that for a longer period of time, you will start to notice significant benefits in your life. That would be the "Benefit in the long run" in my opinion and the benefit is whatever you want it to be. Living in the Present moment is not neglecting the Past and the Future, rather accepting it. What has happened cannot change and because of that unchanging quality of the Past we can always look back for answers and by doing it, we learn from it, we educate ourselves. What we are doing is not neglecting, but accepting the past. The future is a different story, because no one knows what is going to happen. You might die tomorrow, get hit by a bus or a black hole could open and swallow our existence, but that doesn't matter, after it's gone it will remain unchangeable, It will be the Past. The three steps you mentioned: 1. Obtaining knowledge from the past; 2. Conceiving the Idea; 3. Thinking how it will benefit you/others the future. 1. The past is our Teacher and we must obtain knowledge from it. 2. The Idea must be conceived as you said, but just conceiving the idea it isn't enough to bring it to life because to make an idea real is to bring the idea to life, by doing things (taking action) in the present moment that makes that possible. 3. That is neither here nor there, you don't have to think how something will benefit you or others in the future to do it. It's just a matter of opinion. Tesla wouldn't have been able to bring to life his inventions simply by thinking about them, he had to take action in his present moment (What we now see as the Past). Although it is known to us now, it wasn't known to Tesla in his time, so how did he do it, how did he invent something that wasn't there before? The answer is it was always there, because everything is, humans cannot create something that doesn't exist in the universe because theoretically everything exists. The truth is it was part of the Unknown. We already know the Past is Known and the Future is Unknown. What about the Present? The Present is the Known and the Unknown together. If you see it the way I do, you will see that the present has Known and Unknown elements to it and it's how we deal and interact with those elements that determine our lives. The Past - Known The Present - Known and Unknown The Future - Unknown So by following the logic that the Past is Known, the Future is Unknown and the Present is both we can conclude that the only way to access both the Known and the Unknown is by being in the the Present where you can use the knowledge from your past to your advantage along with the pure creativity that the future inspires.