be concerned with the present moment

If you have to be concerned

Be concerned with the present moment

Human minds are very much a mixed blessing. Our thoughts have created amazing things, have allowed us to live a lifestyle unlike any other creature. But there's a negative side to our thinking mind, and that is its busyness takes us away from life. We become concerned, concerned with all sorts of things. We look at the past. We think of the future and worry about it. And we create stories that run through time, often very complicated stories. And all of this thinking is a bit like having a headache all the time. Can you imagine if you worked your other muscles in the same way, they would be completely exhausted. Only the heart and the lungs really keep moving day in, day out, and at least they have a peaceful rhythm to them when we are resting. But it seems sometimes our thinking mind knows no peace. It's always worried, fretful, anxious; or sometimes excited, over excited, hyped up. But it's so rare that it just rests. And it's really difficult to force our own mind to rest. That very forcing is again part of the problem.

So today my feeling is if our mind, a busy, busy mind, has to be concerned about something, let's gently steer it to be concerned about the present moment. Perhaps we can put aside the past, for a moment at least, and the future too. Because the amazing thing about the present moment is that it is simple. The present moment is always very, very simple. It doesn't have all this complication that our stories of the past and future carry. While we might still be in some state of emotion – sad or happy, angry, loving, fearful – if we really focus in the present moment, these emotional states tend to soften and we can feel our whole being relaxing.

In fact, being concerned with the present moment, we don't tend to stay concerned for very long. The present moment is not really a problem for us, and so there is nothing to be concerned about. We can relax and just be with the present moment, whatever is happening. And so with this little trick, if we are lucky, we can allow some presence to come into our life, not by telling the mind to shut up, but rather by steering its concerns into the present moment. It's a trick, and if we are lucky the mind won't see that trick coming. And bringing its concerned anxiousness to the present moment, it might fall silent for a while, and allow us to come back to our being, to come back to life.