Meditation styles and Yoga practice

Yoga

Being in the Moment
Mindfulness can be seen as the practice of "being in the moment" - but what does this actually mean? Does it mean that if we're mindful we should never think about the past and present, never try to anticipate or reflect on our past experience?

Actually, being in the moment means being truly aware of what is going on right here and now, in our experience. Much of the time our experience does not have this quality of awareness or mindfulness. A lot of the time we are like robots, automatically living out habitual patterns of self-pity, anger, wish fulfillment, fear, etc. These habitual tendencies take us over and run our lives for us - without our being able to stand back and decide whether this is what we actually want to be doing. It can be a real shock when you start to realize just how habitual and automatic your life is.

When we're in this robotic state, we're not aware of what's going on. We're angry without being aware that we are angry or that we have an option not to be angry. We fantasize without any discernment of whether what we're thinking about is making us happy or unhappy. And in fact, a lot of the time when we are letting our habits dominate us we are not making ourselves or others happy - it's often quite the opposite.

Being in the moment is just another way of saying that we are aware of what is going on in your experience, that you are not just being angry (or whatever) but are aware that you are angry and are aware that you can choose to be otherwise. Of course a lot of the time when we are not being in the moment, we are literally thinking about the past or present. We might be dwelling on the past - brooding about some past hurt. Or we may be fantasizing about a future in which we have won the lottery and are living out our lives in some imagined paradise.

Often these pasts and futures are not real pasts or futures, but simply fantasies of how things might be or of how we would have liked them to have been. And as with all unmindful activity, we have no awareness that this fantasizing is pointless. All that it does is reinforce unhelpful emotional tendencies that can never truly enrich our lives.

There are, of course, ways of mindfully thinking about the past or future. Being in the moment does not mean that we are stuck in the moment. We can mindfully and creatively call to mind past events, or imagine what might happen in the future. We can think about the past and think about how we might have acted differently, or wonder why something happened the way it did. We can think about possible futures, and of how the actions that we commit now will make those futures more or less likely. When we are thinking about the past or future while being in the moment, we are conscious that we are reflecting. We do not confuse fantasy with reality. We don't stray from thinking about the past in order to construct imaginary pasts in which we said or did the right thing - or if we do so then it's part of a conscious thought experiment to see what we might learn from the experience. We think about the future, but it's not idle daydreaming but an attempt to find a creative goal into which we can grow.

Sometimes daydreaming can be creative. It can be wonderful to relax the reins of consciousness and allow our creative unconscious mind the opportunity to express itself. But it's generally far more useful to have a part of our conscious mind standing by, observing, watching for any sign that the creative expression of the unconscious is turning gray - turning into the repetitive and reactive expression of old and unhelpful emotional patterns. The conscious mind can intervene at such moments with a light touch, a gentle redirection of our mental energies so that we stay in the present; aware, mindful, and creative.