The Now — Understand the Gift of the Present Moment
By: Lucy Milanova
Tags: Inspiration, Mindfulness, Mental Health, Self Improvement, Education

Eckhart Tolle, a well-known mindfulness teacher, the author and advocate of ‘The Power of Now’ who’s brought a lot of perspective on this subject, says:

In today’s rush we all think too much, seek too much, want too much and forget about the joy of just Being. Nothing has happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now. All you really need to do is accept this moment fully. You are then at ease in the here and now and at ease with yourself.

Not knowing how to get to that state and just be there, sadly brings out a multitude of unwanted consequences.

Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry — all forms of fear — are caused by too much future and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness and all forms of non-forgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence. All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. — Eckhart Tolle

Why do we struggle to be present?

Well, to give you a simple answer first, it’s because we are human.

All non-human species — such as the birds, flies and squirrels — find it natural to be in the present moment all the time. That’s what powers their senses, their behaviour, and actions.

Photo by Dušan Smetana on Unsplash

They do it seamlessly, instinctively, intuitively — without even being aware of doing it.

But it is precisely awareness, which distinguishes human beings from other species, that makes it so hard for us to live in the present. — Eyal Winter Ph.D.

Professor of economics at the Hebrew University, Mr Eyal Winters, says that we as humans — compared to animals, are evolutionarily hard-wired to live in the past and the future thanks to our mental cognitive functions.

Our minds deny the existence of the present moment as for them, the time always passes, its linear, and so according to that, there’s no present moment — we only have the past and the future.

Any millisecond before the present moment is already past and any millisecond later is already a future. — Eyal Winter Ph.D.

He further explains this phenomenon.

Other species have instincts and reflexes to help them with their survival, but human survival relies very much on learning and planning. You can’t learn without taking from the past, and you can’t plan without living in the future. Regret, for example, which makes many of us miserable by reflecting on the past, is an indispensable mental mechanism for learning from one’s own mistakes to avoid repeating them. Fears about the future are likewise essential to motivate us to do something that is somewhat unpleasant today but has an enormous benefit for our well-being in the future. Without this fear we would not acquire education or invest in our future; we wouldn’t be able to take responsibility for our health; we wouldn’t even store food. We would simply eat as much as we feel like and dispose of the rest. — Eyal Winter Ph.D.

And although that’s all true and explains well why we struggle to acknowledge and live in the present moment, it doesn’t mean that present is non-existent. Its non-existence is only a concept of our minds, not of our whole being, not of our body and our senses for instance. It is there all the time in fact. But if we only use our minds to guide us in life, we miss out on it completely.

People live as if the present moment were an obstacle that they need to overcome in order to get to some better point which never arrives so that is a mad way to live and it makes living hard, it makes living into an effort. Time isn’t precious at all, because it is an illusion. What you perceive as precious is not time but the one point that is out of time: the Now. That is precious. — Eckhart Tolle

See, I’ve been there as well. The wast majority of my life so far, this is how I lived, what I thought and how I’ve been acting. I was rejecting the existence of the present, forgetting about it and disregarding it. I was soo busy with my mind and being constantly in my mind that there was no space for anything else left. Such as to pause and acknowledge whether I am not missing out on anything. The moment of now perhaps. Or to even acknowledge that it existed.

This year taught me a lesson — not only the present moment exists, it’s more real than anything else. Better than anything else. And it’s not that impossible to be in it.

How to balance our past, present and future

It’s been scientifically proven that too much overthinking (thinking the past) as well as planning (thinking the future) is not good for our health, mental health and overall wellbeing. It brings out anxiety, fear, frustration, stress, apathy, passiveness, sadness, resentment and many more emotional states that later turn into a depression and chronic unhappiness.

On the other hand, people who are able to be in the present more — focused on what they’re experiencing ‘now’ are much happier than the rest. We can just look at the Buddhist monks as evidence. And trust me, there are easier ways of getting present than meditating.

The more you are focused on time — past and future — the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is. — Eckhart Tolle

Do you know how sometimes we are in the present, but aren’t really there — present?

Let’s say you’re in the room and on our laptop, but a part of you — your mind is not there. It’s wandering — in the past or future, or somewhere unrelated to the moment and the task you’re attempting to do in that present time.

That’s when and how we’re losing our present moment. When we’re there physically, but not fully — mentally and emotionally. Those two keep drifting around in the times that are long passed or those that are yet to happen.

Or, we’re there physically and mentally, but not emotionally. Say while you do the tasks that feel robotic, mundane, repetitive such as doing shopping, washing, cleaning, tidying up, admin work. We don’t want to be there, that’s the thing, so we try to rush the moment whatever we are doing in it, just so it can pass quickly because we can’t wait to be somewhere else doing something else. That’s how we’re depriving ourselves of our presence.

We end up devaluing the present moment itself if we don’t pay all activties an equal amount of respect. Regardless of whether one task we enjoy more or less than other. When it is there, it’s there for us and at that moment. The moment belongs to it. And so it deserves our full attention.

They all deserve our full attention and respect as a part of our present. Regardless of the level of comfort they give us or the enjoyability score.