What does it mean to live in the here and now and why is it important?

How the state manifests itself here and now - examples from life

Want to know how to notice that you are in the here and now? I will give a few examples from my own experience:

1. Just like that, it suddenly occurs to me that today is my swim coach's birthday. I come to training and find out that yes! Birthday! There was no way I could have known about this date in advance, because we only met a couple of months ago.
2. In the store I looked for the book I needed, but I couldn’t find it on the shelves. I was already upset, but for some reason I was in no hurry to leave. My legs carried me to the children's literature department, I stopped at a rack with fairy tales, pushed apart the books and in the depths I found exactly the one I was looking for. Hooray!
3. There was a difficult period in my life when I myself needed the support of a psychologist. But there wasn’t enough money for it - a session with a good specialist costs a lot. And suddenly I come across an announcement that a new center for psychological assistance is opening and the first clients can receive a substantial discount.

All these stories are about how if you live here and now, you can get everything that you really need at this very moment.

Why do we need this?

A person who does not know how to live in reality resembles various main characters from science fiction films when they get stuck in some other worlds and spaces. After all, in fact, physically we are in the present, but mentally, that is, with our thoughts, we are in another time.

Yes, it is very important to comprehend your past in order to assimilate and appropriate the experience gained, to realize your mistakes. Or, on the contrary, think about the future and project possible difficulties, thinking through options for solving them in advance. But there must be boundaries in everything, and if we worry too much about what might happen, we will not have time to notice the opportunities that life provides us.

Yes, it is important to live your dream, so that there is motivation for action and, in general, the desire to live remains. But even at the same time, it is necessary to be able to rejoice and accept other pleasant things, to appreciate them. Otherwise, there is a risk of spending entire years without pleasure, focusing only on one main aspiration, which, unfortunately, may not come true. And it often happens that a dream, after many years, simply loses its relevance. Life just passes you by, and this is actually very scary.

Warning

No one knows how many years he is destined to live, and when putting something off for later, not everyone comes to the realization that it may not come later. Yes, I'm talking about scary and unpleasant things. But what could be worse than carelessly wasting every hour, minute, second of your life?

No one is able to control time, humanity is not able to turn it back, which is why it is so important to cherish every moment, to catch them, to be aware and to have the courage to be in the present, sometimes living through not the most pleasant feelings. So that one day you don’t regretfully ask yourself the question: “Have I lived my life in vain?” This is what the phrases “be here and now” and “live consciously” actually mean.

We don't have to follow the law of gravity, but if we simply ignore it, we could fall to our deaths. I really like one metaphor that goes like this: in order to know where we should move next, it is important to know where exactly we are coming from. But the most important thing is where exactly we are at the moment. This is the only way, and no other way, that we can achieve success, that is, achieve what we want.

In the jungle, the law of reality works without any room for error, there you need to look around well, without dreams, otherwise there is a risk of not surviving.

Two sides of the coin

It often happens that people who were diagnosed with fatal diseases, such as oncology or AIDS, and learned about the time allotted on earth, over time began to thank their diseases. Do you know why? Because they were aware of their finitude and appreciated every minute they lived, saturating it with desires, events and everything they wanted to do, but did not dare.

I will say more, after such a moral “revival”, most of them recovered, and those who did not spent their last days in the fullness of sensations. In such situations, I remember the expression about how important quality is, not quantity. After all, it’s true, if you look around, there are a lot of “dead” living people around, “robotic” and tired of everything, for one simple reason - they don’t know how to appreciate their present, their life and the people close to them. Why don’t you start doing this while you are healthy and full of strength?

Unfortunately, this is problem #1 for me. It's hard for me to live here and now. But with a lot of reading and thinking, you can draw some conclusions on how to avoid this. Below are recommendations. If you have your own opinion, please write it in the comments. I will be grateful to you for your advice. If your advice is really effective, I will correct the article and add, with your permission, tips on how to better achieve awareness.

By looking to the past, you will understand how you live in the present.

If you live only in the here and now, you act impulsively. In this case, your behavior is not a consequence of your conscious choice, but only of current circumstances. As a result, you often do things that you later regret.

Conversely, if you are mindful of the past and future and realize that you are creating your memories right now, you approach your life more consciously.

This may sound strange, but our memories of certain events are much more important than these events themselves.

Nothing lasts forever. You won’t even have time to notice how this day will come to an end. All you will be left with are memories of him. Perhaps we agree to certain things precisely for the sake of pleasant memories.

What would you like to remember about today? About the past year? From your whole life in general?

Life is a story that we write ourselves. The present moment is just the mark of a pen on paper. All we know for sure is that this pen cannot be stopped: it will continue to write again and again. In that case, why not take it in your hands and write your own story that will fill the book of our lives?

Journey to the present

The modern pace of life forces us to run around in a circle of daily worries, in between which we yearn for missed opportunities and dream of future successes. But what has passed cannot be returned, and we keep putting off achieving what we want, which does not make us happy. How can we understand in this bustle what time we live in and how often we are here and now? Psychologist, television and radio presenter Mikhail Labkovsky gives the following example:

“A man walks down the street, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, but he cannot enjoy this joy, because in his head there are either experiences from the past, or worries about the future that are not connected with today’s reality.

People who live in the past are prone to depression. They are not adapted to life in the present tense. People who live in the future are anxious people. They are afraid of the future. Psychologically prosperous, happy, generally carefree people who enjoy life can live today.

Take advantage of opportunities

“Some lack the inconstancy to live as they wish,” wrote Seneca. It's easy to get stuck in the mundane, feel terrible about a couple of bad days, live in daily dreams instead of reality.

Life is too short not to change, not to try, not to take risks. It's also too short to do things in ways that no longer work.

If you want to change your life, you have to take action and change something. To travel, you may have to sell something and hit the road. If you want to open a business, you will have to quit your job.

Not in the future, not when someone else takes care of all the details, but now .

What happens if you exercise four times a day?

The ability to be in a state of awareness, to be here and now, does not come by itself. It needs to be developed like any other skill.

Psychologists and masters of mindfulness advise training at least 4 times a day. To improve the skill of mindfulness, you do not need any devices or special conditions. All you have to do is find 5 minutes to close your eyes, and then:

• try to focus on breathing, imagine how, during inhalation, air fills the lungs, and when exhaling, it leaves the body;
• “check” the condition of the arms, legs, and other parts of the body, understand what sensations are in them at the moment;
• open your eyes and carefully look around, notice and mentally list the details of the interior, the people who are nearby;
• think about what you want right now - drink water, eat, relax, or, conversely, be active.

This simple exercise allows you to understand your own state, thoughts, feelings and desires. This skill can be useful not only in critical situations, but also in everyday life. It makes it possible:

• understand your own desires;
• get rid of stress;
• develop intuition.

And training allows you to step back from a disturbing situation at the right time, look at it from the outside and make an informed decision.

A simple technique for engaging in the moment

To engage in the moment here and now, you need to relax and try to switch your attention to something pleasant or funny. You can sing your favorite verse of a song or remember a funny moment in your life. Take a few deep breaths in and out. Start doing the following step by step.

Stage 1. Naming objects.

Slowly lower your eyes and look at the objects around you. Name them. You can add adjectives. This will help give you the feeling of being in a specific place at a given moment in time. It is important not to give subjective assessments, for example, “worn jeans”, “grandmother’s old chest of drawers”. Our assessment can mentally transport us to the past. Only what your eyes can catch, as if taking a photograph, impartially recording what is here and now.

Start the next stage only when you have clearly mastered the first. Perform the following steps simultaneously with the previous one.

Stage 2. Feeling like part of the whole world.

Imagine yourself, clearly listening to all internal processes, you are a living organism, everything inside is working, boiling, working. You feel with every cell of your body subtle odors, the touch of clothing, the pulse in your neck. Feel how your internal organs work. Notice everything that happens around you: snow falls on your cheeks and melts, your nose inhales the cold air of a winter morning, your lungs fill with freshness. Hear birds singing in the distance and the crackle of breaking ice. Observe everything as if you are really feeling what is happening around you for the first time.

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Stage 3. Lack of dialogue with yourself.

After realizing the two stages, you will feel a slight emptiness from previous thoughts and at the same time filled with freshness, a feeling of a clean slate. This is a signal that you are doing everything right. All questions will fade into the background, the desire to find out something will disappear, only openness to new thoughts and sensations will remain.

Suddenly you will notice that a stream of new, different thoughts are actively appearing in your mind. Don’t chase them away, look closely, try to capture and observe. Sometimes it's not so simple.

At first it is difficult to maintain a state of complete renewal of consciousness, a feeling of a clean slate. You will plunge back into a gray reality, but over time you will be able to fix this state for a long time. If you engage in such practices more often, you will be able to be more alone with yourself in the moment here and now.

Three signs of “life here and now”

If you collect scattered, but surprisingly similar statements from teachers who bring Eastern wisdom to the West, you will get something like the following.

First.

Real life here. It exists only in a short moment called “now.” There is no future or past. There are memories (which are actually pictures in the head) and attempts to predict the future (also imaginary pictures).

Tolle writes: “Have you ever sensed, done, thought or felt anything outside the Now? Do you think you will ever be capable of this? Can anything happen or be outside of the Now? The answer is obvious, isn't it? Nothing happened in the past - everything happened in the Now. Nothing will happen in the future - everything will happen in the Now.

What you think of as the past is only a trace in the memory of your mind, a trace of the past moment of Now. When you remember the past, you reactivate a trace in your memory - this is exactly what you are doing now. The future is an imagined present moment, a projection of the mind. When the future comes, it comes as the present moment. When you think about the future, you do it now. The past and future obviously have no reality of their own, they can only reflect the light of the sun, and therefore the past and future are only a weak reflection of the light, power and reality of the eternal presence. Their reality is “borrowed” from the present moment.”

Second

. Western people think too much, while life should not be thought, but rather lived. Enough, they say, to think about music: you can listen to music; and why say “honey” when you can just eat it.

“What's more, the habit of rumination that our narcissistic society encourages can actually make things worse. Research using Sample Experience Studies shows that when people think about themselves, their mood tends to be negative. When a person begins to think without having special skills for this, the first thoughts that arise in his mind are usually depressive. If in a state of flow we forget about ourselves, then in a state of apathy, anxiety or boredom our “ego” usually comes to the fore. Therefore, unless we have mastered the skill of reflection, the activity of “ruminating on problems” usually makes the situation worse instead of making it better,” writes Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

Third

. Let's all live in the flow/moment, it will relieve all worries and sorrows.

Live in the moment, here and now

“Today is all there is;
now is the only time you are in, the only time you will ever be. If you want to live, it’s now or never.” Osho.

Our life from birth is full of different events, awareness and actions.

As we grow older, we move further and further away from living our lives in the moment, i.e. Here and now. We are constantly somewhere - in thoughts, in goals, in conversations (which also, as a rule, relate to what was or will be), in fears, in deeds - in general, anywhere.

When you cook, what do you think about? When you brush your teeth, clean, walk, where are you really?

We were taught to live this way, and we teach this to our children.

“Don’t walk barefoot, you’ll get sick,” I once again said to my daughter, when she joyfully ran towards me across the “cold” floor and wanted to show me something. I sent my child from “now” to somewhere where something might be. And the real reason is “my fear.”

You can object here, but it’s important to warn about what might happen!

Is this really true?

Of course, this and something else can happen and also not happen. I noticed that no matter what I say to my daughter, even 100 times, she learns better what she has experienced.

“Here and now all the most important things in your life are happening” - this phrase once connected me with the fact that I actually do not live.

What does it mean to “live here and now”?

Living here and now is the ability to live in the present, to surrender undividedly to the current moment, to perceive it with all the senses and with your soul, to understand and be aware of this moment, to connect with those and those who are in the moment, and most importantly - to act in it.

We care about what happened and what will happen to us. This is how we live: either in the past or in the future, jerkily connecting with the present for a moment. But the future has not yet arrived, and the past has already passed, and we waste the present time on excitement, vanity, fears, and so on.

Imagine for a moment that a meteorite is flying towards our planet, which will tear it into pieces, and you and everyone on the planet have 3 months of life left. What would you do? How would you spend this time?

I would begin to appreciate even more every minute spent on Earth, every moment, every breath and exhalation. I would not waste a second on what has already happened, and, naturally, on what will happen.

How to live here and now?

Start thinking and talking about your real experiences, sensations and feelings! Choose what is more important, more pleasant, and what you want most right now. Do what you usually put off until later.

Tomorrow may come, or maybe not... But “Now” definitely exists!

“Be in the moment. Bring your total awareness into this moment. Don't let the past interfere, don't let the future come in."

Osho.

Awareness and understanding

My process of connecting myself to the moment began with observation. I woke up in the morning and said to myself: “Here and Now I woke up and see the light in the window.”

• Exercise 1.

During the day, take a moment, take a break from the hustle and bustle and start a sentence: “here and now I see...”, list the surrounding objects, people, and in general everything that you see. Look closely and examine everything you talk about.

This practice is a contribution to the development of mindfulness.

I know that you can learn to control your mind and concentrate on what you are doing here and now, without remembering the past and without thinking about the future. The main thing is intention, and it will happen if there is understanding. Understanding that by living here and now, you will become much happier, because you will feel life in all its fullness.

• Exercise 2.

You'll need one more minute. In the flow of the day, stop at the most active moment, begin to monitor your breathing, the sounds that are around, the smells and your sensations. Connect with what you feel here and now, in this minute, in this second.

Mindfulness in every moment of life is the most effective method to rid yourself of stress and routine.

In the moment here and now there is always everything that is important to you.

Letting go of the past and not waiting for the future, but simply living and experiencing everything that is now is an approach filled with awareness.

With love, author.

Put down your gadgets

Seneca wrote that people are most protective of money and property, but are careless of the one thing they cannot get back: time.

“It’s not that we have too little time to live,” he said, “it’s just that we waste too much of it.” Can you imagine what he would say about people who spend an average of more than five hours a day on gadgets? That's 76 days a year, about 11 weeks, and a ton of unproductivity.

In Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport explains that the designers of gadgets and social networks are not your friends, and you are not their client. You are the product they sell to advertisers, applications, and database owners.

The average user accesses their mobile device more than 2,600 times a day. What if instead, on at least a dozen occasions, we picked up a magazine, a book, got down to work, talked to a loved one? By spending these five hours productively, you can do much more useful things.

What will happen to you next?

If you practice the ability to be here and now every day, then over time, moments of awareness will begin to arise spontaneously and more often. You no longer need to play the game “name the object”: the sensations will become stronger and more beautiful without it.

Subsequently, you will learn to enter the presence mode here and now literally on the go and even during a conversation. Imagine, you were called to a showdown with your superiors, and you are calm, like Buddha. You watch the whole conversation from the side, like Fyodor Bondarchuk in a navigator - there’s an accident, and there’s a traffic jam, we’ll go around here. And it’s no longer the boss who controls the script, but you.

When I first started being present, I couldn't speak and be present at the same time. It took a while before I learned how to do this.

Robert Burton "Self-Remembering"

Why any anxiety is a fear of death

Any anxiety is anxiety about the future, and anxiety about the future is a well-disguised fear of death. After all, this is the worst thing that can happen in the future. Man is an imaginative animal. He is therefore able to simulate the future, and at the same time has some suspicions about his own mortality, which - along with suspicions - he tries in every possible way to avoid.

Canadian psychotherapist Jordan Peterson talks about it this way: a person is able to create artificial worlds in his head, populate them with his own avatars, acting in different ways, and see which of these avatars survives. In “The Denial of Death,” anthropologist Ernest Becker generally suggests that all human civilization and culture were created solely to mask or somehow soften this fear of death. There he writes that oriental guys are no exception. The Buddhists acted most cunningly of all, pretending that they did not want rebirth: in short, the goal of any self-respecting Buddhist is to get out of the “wheel of samsara” and stop being reborn. Pretending that you don't want what you want most is a great ploy!

In spiritual books about “life in the moment”, one way or another, the issues of death are touched upon, but only with the saying “there is no death, what are you saying.” This paradox was invented by Lucretius a couple of thousand years ago: “Where I am, there is no death, where there is death, there is no me. Therefore death is nothing to me." According to the European psychological tradition, this and similar moves are defense mechanisms with the help of which people persistently try to look away and not look there

.

Why is this so, and what are the consequences of being separated from life in the present?

Humans, unlike animals, have the ability to think abstractly. In itself this is neither good nor bad. At some points this can help a person solve his problems, but at others it can interfere.

But now we are talking about those situations, and even more - about this way of life, when an excessive emphasis on abstract thinking prevents a person from living in the present and solving current problems as efficiently as possible.

While adding branches to the fire, I noticed one of the actions of the Shaman who was preparing the “table”. He took out a boiled chicken egg from the bag, which had turned into an icy piece of ice in the forty-degree frost, and, almost without looking, with one blow of a knife he split it into two equal parts.

Having sat down, I tried to crack a couple of eggs with my heavier knife, then three more with the Shaman’s knife. I couldn't crack a single egg smoothly and without crumbs. This made me think about some special skill of the Shaman.

-Have you often cracked eggs like this?

- I don’t remember. And you don’t bring them often.

- How did you learn to split so smoothly?

- I didn’t study. Something like this will come to mind.

- But how do you inject them?

- Look. (The shaman carelessly struck my knife not across, but along the last whole egg, which split into two equal halves.)

- What's the secret?

- We have different actions.

- What is the difference?

- When I act, I act completely . And you - in parts

.

— In what parts?

- For example, one part of you is not sure that you can handle the egg, the other thinks that cracked eggs will not go to waste in the cold, the third is generally in Magadan with the problems of your own eggs.

- But my actions may be more complex than your situational ones.

- Your actions can only be more diffuse. For example, instead of accurately hitting the egg, you hit your fingers hysterically. Such sloppiness makes a person weak and old.

- What should I do to learn to act like you?

- Doesn't matter. You can, for example, crack eggs. The main thing when you prick eggs is to prick the eggs, and don’t catch the crows.

Serkin "Shaman's Laughter"

Exhaustive, isn't it?

The ability for abstract thinking sometimes plays a bad joke on a person: it prevents him from living in the present, separates him from the reality with which he is busy right now, and turns his actions into ineffective ones.

I will give a few typical customer complaints, in which many, I think, recognize themselves:

“When I have sex, I sometimes think about how I look, what my partner thinks of me, whether he/she likes my body, whether the partner is happy enough with what is happening, whether it would be excessive to offer this or that, I remember previous partners, old grievances/comparisons/questions come up, I think about what will happen if it suddenly doesn’t work out...”

The result is erectile dysfunction, orgasm, dissatisfaction, fears, tension, and generally poor quality sex.

“When I’m about to express my idea to my boss/go through an interview, I think about what the boss will think of me, is it appropriate to talk about this and that, past failures come up, thoughts come to mind about what will happen if I don’t like/don’t like the idea I’ll pass the interview, what to do next..."

The result is a failed interview, an unconsidered idea, a lack of interest in your personality and devaluation of your proposals, general disappointment in yourself and a drop in self-esteem, which further deepens your fears at the next interview or when talking with your superiors.

“When I find myself in a new company, I try to imagine what I need to do and say to get people to like me, I think through my lines, imagine what I can be like, worry about what will happen if that situation repeats.” Last New Year, I felt like I was out of place in the company, I’m trying to analyze what I did wrong...”

The result is alienation of people, coldness, feeling superfluous again, sad thoughts, damage to self-esteem, despair and disappointment instead of positive emotions.

What are the characteristics of all these situations? A person is anywhere but in the present - in past situations, in dreams and plans for the future, in fantasies (that is, in general in an abstractly existing reality), in various assumptions “what if”….

The trouble is that the emphasis on this way of perceiving the world in most of us is brought up by our parents and our culture. How many of you were told in childhood and adolescence: “think with your head, try to foresee the consequences, maybe this or that!” – and give examples of their own or others’, often negative, experiences.

The thought itself is not so bad. Where you can think about the available information, estimate the chances, reasonably evaluate your capabilities and the reactions of other participants in the situation - this can be done.

But the problem is that this has a limit. Not a single, even the most advanced analytical tool can take into account all the variables of this world. No person can predict all consequences. Not a single action, taking into account all possible inclusions of reality, can be 100% predicted.

Reality is changing. Living in the present means constantly discovering something new. If your past experience says “I have an example of failure”, it means that you simply have such experience. This means that you can draw some conclusions from this experience, perhaps realize what you shouldn’t do anymore.

But this experience does not mean at all that the situation will repeat itself. Moreover, if you are open to changes in reality, then you can guarantee that everything will be somehow different. It will be the same as before only when you yourself expect the usual, albeit unpleasant, turn of events.

Many are misled by everyday and well-established actions: the road along familiar routes, where, it would seem, nothing changes, patterns of life that seem safe to some - “learn to do this and you will always have a piece of bread”, patterns of life in general - “raise a son, plant a tree and build a house,” etc. In some cases they actually work. But they don't work safely very often.

Remember how many of your plans were destroyed by some “force majeure circumstances”?

Starting from global ones - the death of loved ones, serious illnesses, sudden losses of money, business failures or political-economic crises, to a banal cold that happened “just” on the most important day, the no less banal being late for the train, or even an icicle suddenly falling on the roof of the car. .

The illusion of control is precisely what prevents us from living in the present, what sometimes forces us to “get trapped” in various mental constructs that seem designed to protect us from the vagaries of unpredictable reality.

In fact, trying to control events distracts us from directly reacting to the real world and sometimes makes the reaction itself completely ineffective.

After all, as we have already said, it will not be possible to predict everything 100%, especially based on the experience of others, and your own too. Trying to rely on your spontaneous reaction looks much more reliable. Which is only possible when you are in the present.

I don’t want to say that you don’t need to think at all.

The difference between conscious, genuine thinking and pouring from empty to empty is obvious: when you really think, you try to build the entire chain of a problem, a task - where it began, how it developed, how certain arguments that you use in your judgments are justified, there is does the question have a history (your personal one or in general in the history of people or culture, philosophy, science, religion), how does it relate to your feelings, what conclusions can you draw from your experience.

This is a reflection and should be treated with respect.

Fragmentary and unsystematic thinking is a completely different matter. Which is not inclined to delve into research, logic, history and analysis of your experiences. Unsystematic thinking is simply the mind jumping from subject to subject and the inability to concentrate on anything for more than a minute, two, three, and alas, as practice shows, this is what is usually called the verb “to think”….

The conscious process of thinking should be given its place and time. If, for example, you need to think about a personal problem, find a comfortable body position, create the necessary level of silence (or put on the music you need), prepare paper and pen to write down important things, ask not to disturb you, or get away from people somewhere for a while. nature, to a secluded place.

And don’t forget to agree with yourself about how much time you will think. If, for example, the allotted hour has passed and you haven’t come to anything, there is no point in continuing to “drive” the problem in a circle in your head. This means you are not ready to solve it yet.

And if you immerse yourself in the present, in the reality that is happening to you here and now, most likely the answer will come faster than if you continue to play a “broken record” in your head.

If you are engaged in intellectual work or periodically need analytical processing of this or that information that is important to you, is it necessary to completely disconnect from the sensations of the body? Perhaps they can also tell you some steps in solving your problems? After all, you are a whole. It is much more productive to work as a whole rather than as a part.

Why live more than half of your life in various “maybes” and “what ifs,” if you can go and find out how it will actually be, and if it’s not time to find out yet, just do what’s relevant right now, or relax fully?

And about what specific benefits we will receive in practice by living in the present - in the next article, which is available only to registered members of our site (registration form at the bottom right)

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Here and now: how to live in the present?

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