Letters from the International School
Staying in the present moment by Kim Nataraja
If we just watch our thoughts for a while, we realise quite soon
that all of them are linked to the past or to the future. They whirl
around our concerns about what has happened, in the form of memories,
both good and bad, or about what might happen, our fears, hopes,
desires and plans. We do not even see people and situations as they
really are, but coloured by our thoughts, opinions, prejudices,
experience and emotions. In fact, we could easily say that we walk
around in a landscape of our own mind, our own thoughts, a world
of illusion of our own making. We get so caught up in our own story;
this creation of our mind can be so powerful that it may seem to
be the only reality that exists. It can mask the existence of a
Higher Reality.
But this Higher Reality, God, is experienced by the Mystics as pure
‘Being’ in the ‘Here and Now’:
“.” (Meister Eckhart) Among names none is more
appropriate than He-who-is…for he dwells always anew in a
Now without ceasing
When Moses asks God who he is, he gets two answers – one
stresses the historical aspect: “I am the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob.” (Exodus) and the second points to the God
in the Here and Now: “I am that I am” (Exodus) - pure
being, pure energy, pure consciousness. In the ‘Gospel of
John’ we hear Jesus say something similar about himself: “Before
Abraham was ‘I am’.”
Letting go off our thoughts allows us to stay in the present moment.
It is the ‘narrow path’ of attention on our mantra that
helps us to reach the silence in the ground of our being, in the
Here and Now, by leaving our conditioned being behind. Eternity
is in the Now. We need to realise that time is really made up out
of a string of ‘Now’ moments – everything happens
in the Now. But we distort the Now, by dwelling in our memories
or by using this precious moment as a mere stepping stone to anticipate
and prepare for the future.
Moreover, once the Now moment has been and gone, what is left
of it becomes part of the past, a mere memory. These are again constructs
of the mind: interpretations of events coloured by self-deception,
by fear, hope or the need for consolation, really not much different
from a dream or fantasy. This colouring furthermore varies depending
on our changing moods and circumstances. We need to let go of these
mirages; there is really only the ‘Here and Now’. Being
present, listening attentively to the mantra enables us to do so,
to let go of thoughts and images, the past and the future and allows
us to be our true ‘self’ dwelling in the Now:
“To be mindful is to live in the present moment, not
to be imprisoned in the past, nor anticipating a future that may
never happen. When we are fully aware of the present, life is transformed
and the strain and stress disappear. So much of modern life is a
feverish anticipation of future activity and excitement. We have
to learn to step back from this into the freedom and possibility
of the present." (Bede Griffiths)
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