The past and the future no longer exist. There is only now. That’s the essential truth, and it is equally true that the past teaches us important lessons and our bodily survival & social systems require us to make plans for the future. How do we maintain the proper balance between the ideas of the past and future & the reality of now? The simple answer is to live mindfully. Yet, living mindfully can be confronting and disconcerting.
Our own beliefs and cultural biases about how the world works or what things mean can challenge us and cause uncertainty. That uncertainty can lead to feelings of ungroundedness. When we feel ungrounded or unable to confront what is now, it’s easy to become paralyzed by our emotions and instinctive feelings. That isn’t the state of being you want to be in when making decisions and making choices. In reality, we can create more pain and trouble for ourselves when we are:
- unable to confront or avoid what is happening now.
- attached to our own desired outcomes and expectations.
- unable to detach from our past experiences, people, places and things.
Even though when we were born we had the ability to live mindfully with remarkable ease, we slowly were conditioned out of it. We can naturally re-learn this skill that was once inherent in our nature. We can choose to live mindfully. Mindful living keeps us grounded and present. It allows us to live intentionally. But how?
Derek Jeter of baseball fame once said, “You don’t just accidentally show up in the World Series.” No, you don’t. It’s the same with any skill that we learn or re-learn. It requires practice. You don’t get to mindful living without practicing mindfulness and mindfulness is a skill that you acquire through practice and that practice is meditation.
You need mindfulness and meditation to get to mindful living.
mindfulness, meditation & mindful living
You need mindfulness and meditation to get to mindful living.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness allows us to become aware of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment right now. Mindfulness simply reminds us that the journey is the destination.
When we practice mindfulness, we practice:
- bringing ourselves back to what is now with compassion for ourselves and others.
- letting go of our attachment to the past or imaginings of the future.
- non-judgement and living moment-to-moment.
Meditation
Meditation is the vehicle that allows us to practice mindfulness and effectively train our nervous systems to create space to live with intention.
Mindful Living
Mindful living is the result of a regular mindfulness meditation practice. When we practice mindful living, we can call ourselves away from the wandering and restless mind that reacts based on our past conditioning, experiences and survival instincts and come back to now with less effort.
In the end from baseball to art to cooking and to living mindfully, it boils down to – practice, practice, practice and let’s not forget that living in the now still includes making future plans and setting goals, and it still includes reflecting on past events too. Only now the difference is that when you live your life mindfully you can do these things without attachment or at the very least catch yourself and get back to what is in the here and now.
