During the Holidays, I made an intention of practicing “being present” as much as I could.
My definition of “being present” is an awareness of our breath, our thoughts, our emotional moods(s), our bodies, our consciousness of our environment, the expressions of our intution and creativity and how we influence and impact the people in our lives. As I was working with this idea, I began to wonder, “how much of our lives do we fully or near-fully experience?”
We all have a good understanding that there is a “maze of distractions” in our every day lives that compromises our focus, our personal intentions, our goals and our dreams. A house of mirrors that operates as a mechanistic vacuum. If left un-managed, this distraction machine claims our time, our efforts, our energy, our relations with others, our inspiration, our empowerment, our sense of adventure, our destiny and even our life force.
I could probably relay a great deal of complex and intricate information about the multi-tiered social distraction infrastructures currently in place to keep us all preoccupied from the important things in life and what’s really going on in the world, yet that would possibly lose most whom would choose to read this.
One thing that has occurred to me, during my several years of researching, investigating, reading and discussing with friends about what has and is going on in our global society, not accurately or appropriately broadcast by our esteemed mainstream media, is the current ratio between the attention the issues, problems, dilemmas and dramas receive in relation to the coverage of the solutions, resolutions, revelations, achievements, progresses and all the extraordinary things that happen around the world every day.
I get it, it’s the ratings. On average, people would rather tune into the negatively-charged articles than positively-infused stories. It is what it is. It is where our society is at in its social evolution. This is also a reflection of us personally and the status of how much of our lives we do experience.
You have to admit it is interesting that even the “alternative media sources” tend to focus more on the problems than on their solutions. If we are encountering a barrage of distractions in our daily lives, in our thoughts, in our emotions, issues with our bodies and challenges in our relations with others and with ourselves, how much of our lives do we truly experience? Have we ever fully experienced our lives? If we have, how long did it that experience last? How can we experience our lives more fully.
The only answer I can offer is found in the first paragraph of this note, “being present.” For me, being present isn’t just about showing up, paying attention, staying focused, interacting with others, going about our busy days, monitoring our thoughts, our words, our feelings or our reactivity to events and occurrences in our lives.
Being present is about disengaging from the things, people, thoughts, feelings, reactions, dramas and stimuli in our lives that do not bring us happiness, fulfillment, joy, health, peace, inspiration and love.
Being present is acknowledging that we all have a choice to engage in only what inspires, empowers, sustains, enlivens and unites us. Imagine that our lives are a blackboard littered with scribbles, marks, shapes, lines, words and symbols in chalk.
Being present is the ability for us to choose to pick up the eraser and clear the board of the things in our lives that no longer serve us.
When we choose to do this, we are able to make space for us to create new inspirations. And when these new inspirations are no longer working for us, we can choose to clear them and create even newer ones that will.
The past does not serve us, it enslaves us.
The future is only beneficial to us when it has become our present. The present is all there is. Being present allows us to experience the most of our lives.
When is the best time to be present?
Now.
Iam Saums 