Royane Real
Learning to Practice Mindfulness
By Royane Real
Author of “Your Guide to Finding Friends, Making Friends and Keeping Friends”
When I was young, back in the seventies, there was a common saying that hippies had. Perhaps you’ve heard it. That saying was, “BE HERE NOW.”
Although I think that many young people in those days said this message to each other quite mindlessly, the actual message of the saying is something worth keeping in mind. Because the message itself is a reminder to be mindful.
Mindful of self. Mindful of others. Mindful of life. Of spirit. Of everything. Of nothingness.
How many of us today have time for any mindfulness? To simply, truly BE. Not just be in a vegetative, dazed state, but to BE in a state of total awareness and presence.
Instead of being in the present, we are rushing around madly, from one project to another, overscheduled, overworked, harassed, frantic, worried. When do we have time to feel the simplest joy?
When do we let ourselves just “BE”?
The ability to just “BE ” is always available to us. We just have to stop what we are doing, if only for a few minutes, and let it happen.
Pay attention. Notice your surroundings. Notice what you are avoiding. Notice your breathing, your body, your awareness of it all.
We have forgotten how to stop, even for a few minutes. When we do have quiet time, we fill our mind with more frantic processing of what might happen in the future. We think about what might happen, what we don’t want to happen, what we fear.
Or we revisit pictures from the past: past glories, past agonies, past humiliations or past joys.
Our mind will preoccupy itself with anything, just to stop that one thing –to run away from being completely present in the now.
When we keep our mind focused on the past or focused on the future, even if it is a future just five minutes from now, we feel because we can’t control the future. We can’t live in the future, even if it’s a future just five minutes away.
But when we send our minds frantically into the past or into the future, we generate adrenaline. That adrenaline we get from not living in the present becomes a drug. We seek the high of rushing away from the present.
What will happen to our life if we are never actually here?
How can we get back to living more often in the present moment?
We may need to remind ourselves to be mindful countless times a day. We need to stop and pay attention to the present, even if it’s just for a moment.
Stop rushing. Stop for a minute and let yourself feel your being. Feel your body being alive. Close your eyes and feel your existence. Notice what it feels like inside your whole body. Breathe. Let it go. Look around you. What do you see?
One easy way that many of us can recapture some of our ability to be in the moment, is to spend time with some young children. Children can still experience the world with a freshness that we have forgotten.
Too often with our children, our minds are too busy to truly join them. Instead of sharing our children’s experience of the world, we are once again frantically living in the future, making plans for the next day, rushing from one place to another, feeling irritated and annoyed.
Our children too often become a chore or a bore, or a project. We forget that we can join them in their consciousness of the present moment. This is a form of consciousness that we may have forgotten. We can still experience the world without preconceptions and explanations for everything. Our children have at least as much to teach us as we have to teach them.
Spend time with your children before they forget how to be mindful.
Join them before they forget how to BE HERE NOW.
This article was written by Royane Real, author of the popular book “Your Guide to Finding Friends, Making Friends and Keeping Friends” available at http://www.lulu.com/real
Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites
