Principle #1: Live In The Now

As promised, this week starts the series "7 Principles for Consciously Creating Your Life" on how to create more conscious, joyous and abundant lives. Many of you have asked for practical suggestions on how to initiate personal and spiritual exploration. While there is no single roadmap -- there are as many unique routes up the mountain as there are unique trekkers blazing the trail -- a few simple, universal principles can help bring us into alignment with higher sources of wisdom. Once we understand the relationship between our internal landscape (mind and thoughts) and external landscape (events and experiences) we can begin to consciously create the lives we desire.

The first principle of conscious creation may sound incredibly simplistic, but is actually quite challenging to master: Live in the Now.

The natural tendency of the human mind is to race around from one thought to another. Rather than maintaining awareness in the present moment, we spend countless hours rehashing the past and fretting over the future. Let's take a look at both...

Imagine the last time someone insulted or offended you. How long did you cycle over it in your mind? "He was wrong. It wasn't my fault. She's to blame..." If you are a like most people, the incident kicked off a deluge of internal dialogue, probably lasting hours or days, all fixated on a single (already old) moment. When you hold resentments toward others, you bind those individuals to you energetically. As you cycle over past transgressions in your mind, replaying the memories, you lock yourself in bondage to past experience. These trapped memories are stockpiled in the subconscious mind and, unbeknownst to you, subtly flavor all new experiences. Rather than living a new reality in every moment, you recycle past resentments over and over.

Alternately, if you're not rehashing the past, your mind is likely projecting out into the future, worrying about how things will play out for you. "What if you're not successful? How will you support yourself?..." You constantly fret over possible future scenarios, feeling fear and anxiety even though your fantasies have no basis in reality. Arianna recently laughingly shared a quote by Montaigne she keeps on her desk to ward off phantom fears. Liberally translated from French, it says, "There were many terrible things in my life and most of them never happened."

Ultimately, this mischief of the mind limits your creative power - you cannot create from the past, nor can you create in the future. You can only create in present moment...in the Now.

The Now is eternal and unbounded. It is without content. It is free from any orientation or attachment. Some traditions describe the Now as the gap between two thoughts. By slipping into the gap of the Now you can structure an entirely new experience. When you are fully attentive to the moment, you can access the field of infinite potential...where past, present and future do not dictate your reality.

Every moment is truly new. Every moment is pregnant with possibility and imbued with vast creative intelligence. Your job is to constantly empty the mind, giving up old moments in favor of unlimited possibility. No matter what has come before, a new reality is possible this moment. No matter how "bad" your day has been, you have the power to create the best day of your life.

I want to give you three exercises this week to practice staying in the Now:

Offering Forgiveness -- Write down all the resentments, misunderstandings, grudges, conflicts and confusions that you are still holding onto. As you complete each page, offer forgiveness to all those on the list and ask that all old emotions, energies and memories be released and healed. Crumple the paper up and burn it in the fireplace. When the mind sees the fire consuming the paper, it will intuit that the burden is gone and the emotion of the embedded experience can be dissolved.

Cultivating Breath Awareness - The breath carries life force energy and meters the natural rhythms of the body. Sit quietly and imagine the breath traveling in a continuous circle, from the in-breath to the out-breath, round and round. Let the breath flow naturally and comfortably. Notice when the out-breath turns into the in-breath and vice versa. This process of observing the breath will quiet the activity of the mind. You will relax into the Now.

Bringing Awareness Inward - Most mystical traditions recognize the existence of an energetic body, corresponding to the physical body, which directs the inner flow of subtle energy throughout the system. The central energy channel runs parallel to the spine, from the tailbone to the top of the head, and connects the lower instinctual centers with the higher functions of intuition, spiritual sight and divine guidance.

Sit quietly and bring your attention to the spinal column. Visualize a channel of light running up the middle of the spine. Imagine your breath moving through this channel, starting at the base of the spine, moving slowly up the spinal column, then out through the top of the head. Repeat this as many times as you like. By doing this you will become aware of your inner essence, the eternal witnessing presence that rests in the Now.

Comments

[stevesrant]

Live Now. Simple, immediate.
Live in the Now. Where is this place?

[Arithrianos]

I agree being present is vital to happiness, but i sometimes find myself instead of being present, I sometimes am energeticly "tying" to be present, which is of course a trap. Basically it involves double checking to make sure you are in the now, which of course means you are not in the now, you are in the very near past. When I notice this i let that go, as i do everything else.

[Elizabeth]

learn meditation (not an easy task), let your thoughts flow without stopping at any one, do the breathing that meditation requires. meditate for 30 min or less to prepare for living in the moment.

i find living in the present moment easier than most. in fact, i know only one man that does it naturally other than buddhists, of course. you might want to mention where "living in the now" originated.

[geobushono]

This very popular book "Be Here Now",was very influential in the 70s, introducing many of us to Eastern Thought.

http://www.amazon.com/Be-Here-Now-Ram-Dass/dp/0517543052

check out the reviews

[karma namdak]

This is good advice. I would also add that we shouldn't be too hard on thoughts. I have fallen into the trap myself of considering thoughts as "bad" and a thought-free state as "good".

It's hard to see and even harder to remember that having lots of thoughts is neither bad nor good. What we should be doing is asking ourselves, what is the nature of thoughts? Do thoughts have an intrinsically good or bad nature?

It seems easy for us to recognize that people aren't intrinsically good or bad, or that sights, sounds, smells or tastes aren't inherently good or bad... but we fail to recognize this about thoughts, even though their nature is the same as any other phenomenon.

What is it about thoughts that seems to make them so distracting? Are they any less real or unreal than anything else? Are they somehow special?

There are many experiences we crave or reject. The craving and rejecting is the source of our confusion and distraction, not the experiences.

[Shan1148]

Stacey ~ Thank you for having the courage to write. And, more importantly, thank you for having the inner courage to experience *yourself*. There are few people out there who "get it right" and you do. This is a path that I have walked for the better part of my life, and til now, I knew of noone outside my circle that did the same, not to mention have the courage to try to teach the masses.
The only thing I would add here has to do with forgiveness...You must forgive yourself before you can find it in you to forgive others. You can give what you don't have.
Thank you again.

[wldnswmmr]

That was very nice and helpful, thank you. It's still dark here on the West Coast, and I just returned home from Peet's Coffee to view a full moon through a veil of rain clouds. That and your piece make a good start for Martin Luther King's day.

[boyd]

Just leaping ahead of all the derisive and scathing comments that always follow articles like this here,
wanted to thank you for the interesting information, thoughtfully presented.

It is very hard (for me) to let go of some kinds of past-dwelling, and I welcome the reminder that holding grudges ties one energetically to the past and painful...
better to "be here now".....