Being in the present moment is very difficult for many many people, mainly due to our over-active minds. There is only one place we find issues, thoughts, anxiety, panic, worry, problems, regret, and everything else; and that is in our minds! Our minds are problem solvers. they are picture makers. They are thinkers. That’s what they do. But they have become out of control, and we now all have many problems and no solutions.
The problem with is that most of humanity lives in their MIND.
Most of us are in our minds only. We are run by our overactive minds. Our ego’s are out of control. Our depression and anxiety are out of control. We have lost ourselves. We listen to everything external to ourselves. We get trainers to tell us what we should do. We get friends to tell us their advice about what we should do. We get doctors to tell us what to do. We look at Instagram influencers and TV and everything but ourselves.
Meanwhile our intuition has gone dormant.
Humans are becoming more like automatons rather than beings. And we ARE beings. We have souls. We feel. We create. We imagine. And it seems like we have forgotten how to do this. How to create in the moment without planning anything. We have forgotten how to operate from our feelings. We have forgotten how to tune in and know what the answer is, to know what the best outcome is, to know what other people are feeling.
We definitely need more empathy and compassion. We need to get out of our minds and into feeling.
When you clear your mind, or at least manage your thoughts, and operate from a relaxed place of feeling and creation, it creates space for creativity. it creates space for intuition. It mens your nervous system is more relaxed. That means more positive and productive thoughts. It means you create space for clarity within yourself. This space allows you to be more at peace and become more present with yourself and your life.
When your inner wisdom and intuition activate, then you can truly start creating the life that you want.
I’m going to step back a bit and describe the three parts of ourselves and the role the mind plays.
The Soul is an energy that centers itself within our body it also creates an energy field around the outside of us. This is the first point of creation; the first point of intuition and creativity.
The Mind has become a powerful tool and it helps creates our external reality. It has also become the most dominant part of us. We use this part the most. It was a tool and it has become our god.
The Body is a large storage facility. The body stores everything the mind thinks. This is our computer hard drive. It’s the last part of us to process and let go of things.
The mind now thinks so much that the body becomes overloaded. It’s like a hard drive running that’s full and hasn’t be defragged in a long time. When our computer cleaning doesn’t get done, we get full and we jam up. The energy around the outside of the body stops getting the access it needs to infuse us with fresh energy and cleanse the body. So we become static. We stop being creative. We stop going with the flow. We stop tuning into our feelings. We become a mind machine.
The way we talk about our minds has an influence too.
The language we use is powerful and our brains are influenced by the words we speak. If you look at words closely it reveals a lot about what we prioritise and how we see things and what we believe. For example;
Mindfulness – it puts our mind first. but our mind is a tool it’s not meant to be our god. We don’t get to inner peace by going through our mind. (We’re trying!) Mindfulness would be better as ‘Soulfulness’. Because we are a soul.
Mind Body Soul. I’m sure you have all heard this phrase. Despite the best intentions of people to recognise the body and the soul, we have again put the mind first. it’s like it’s our top priority, over our own physical body and our own soul. My friends and I say Soul Mind Body. We recognise that to heal the mind and the body you tap into the soul first.
Notice a pattern? They are all brainwashing us in one direction; our mind. And we are already TOO MUCH in our minds. That’s where we are going wrong. We are giving a tool too much power, and now it’s like a run away train. We think it’s great, we are all on the train, thinking we are going for a great ride, but what happens to runaway trains?
The bottom line is our minds are so over active as it is, yet the common advice is to do a variety of things that ‘stimulates the brain’ and ‘keeps your mind pumping’ and we are encouraged to do games and puzzles that ‘keep the mind sharp’ and ‘keep the brain active’.
The problem is that our brains are already too active! It rules us!
Most of humanity is so brainwashed into their minds they don’t know who they are, and they don’t know they don’t know. And when you don’t know yourself, you aren’t tuned into yourself, your knowing, or your power.
When you gain the ability to centre your mind, that is when you start tapping into your higher self.
One of the easiest ways to achieve this is to centre your thought on yourself. To manage your thoughts. Manage your feelings and emotions. Realise you create every part of your reality. Realise you are the god of your life. Realise you are not your identities. You are not your personality. You are not your experiences. You are not a victim. You are in charge.
See being on Earth is about integration, it’s about learning, it’s about experiencing, and growing as a being.
We are not here on earth to strengthen our crazy minds with puzzles.
Did you know there is a high likelihood that Alzheimer’s and similar brain diseases are caused by an overactive mind. I did a Google search and picked out some of the top results for you to look into.
–> https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/788/could-an-overactive-brain-increase-the-chances-of-alzheimers-disease
–> http://www.dana.org/News/Details.aspx?id=43237
–> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140630164519.htm
–> https://www.quora.com/Could-an-overactive-brain-increase-the-chances-of-Alzheimers-Disease
–> https://www.alzforum.org/news/research-news/do-overactive-brain-networks-broadcast-alzheimers-pathology
Another danger is that the mind makes stories. It makes pictures. It makes fantasies.
And often we can’t tell what’s real and what’s not. So now much of humanity is living in fantasy; we have fantasy about our perceptions of ourselves. Either we’ve created a story that we are a helpless useless victim. Or we have too much ego or we have not enough self belief. Yet even when we are sitting there feeling sorry for ourselves, we have grand fantasies about what we expect from life. And this is otherwise known as expectations.
And this chasm between our expectations and our reality needs to be closed.
You must learn not to have expectation on anything. Do not make pictures or plans in your mind about something that isn’t happening yet. Do not build something up so you expect something from someone or some situation.
Expectation breeds disappointment.
How it works is you think about something then your mind creates expectation that it will be a certain way, or that a certain thing will happen, and when it doesn’t that’s when you feel disappointment. Human life is a fluid motion, and everything we do is consistently changing from moment to moment. So how could you expect anything anyway?
Expectations cause disappointment, and this is one root cause of the prevalence of depression. If you have no expectations, and you live in the moment, then anything that happens is great! You are more likely to be grateful for things, you are more likely to have acceptance. The more you live in the moment, the less you worry about the future.
YOU have the power to stop thinking any thoughts that are not empowering.
A a lot of us have fantasy about the future – thinking about the future causes anxiety. SO STOP!
Asking ‘what if’ – this is a waste of time. Deal with reality as and when it happens, as it appears in front of you. Do not put thought on things that haven’t or won’t happen! If you catch yourself, stop yourself!
Asking ‘Why? ‘Why do they, why me, why did that happen…. see above. This is also a complete waste of time. Only people with a victim consciousness keep asking why. It’s as hopeless as trying to push the water in the stream back uphill with your hands.
What do we need to start doing?
We have been scattered internally, eroded, broken down, like rocks on the beach turning to sand. The ocean in this metaphor is our thoughts, our past and our emotional trauma. However now it’s important we work on integrating this back into ourselves, and being more in the now and clearing this baggage so we can become whole once more.
Peel away layers of stinky thinking. The horsemen of the apocalypse are judgement, jealousy, neediness, and fear. Also greed, ego, selfishness, and any other undesirable aspects. You need to start deciding not to allow these aspects to operate within you. You need to kick them out of the house of your mind. You need to catch yourself and stop any stinky thinking you have. You need to choose to manage yourself and your emotions better.
Step up and take responsibility for yourself. This change work takes a huge level of self-responsibility that some people aren’t up to yet. If you work on it and you stumble that’s OK, as long as you have the intent to operate from a higher level. If people are not doing the work, accept where they are. Everyone will come to their own realisations in their own time. If it’s your time, then be the master of yourself. By shifting your consciousness you influence those around you positively. So the change truly starts with you. And by clearing yourself, and deciding to clear all emotional baggage and negativity from your being and your mind, you can become truly empowered within yourself, and you will come to really know yourself, accept yourself, believe in yourself and love yourself. And don’t we all want that.
Get in touch with our higher selves and our intuition; this deeper level of knowing and listening to ourselves gives us access to our own innate wisdom and knowing, which means we will know what’s right for us and what we need; we won’t run around asking questions and panicking and wondering. We will know.
Start seeing ourselves more clearly; the more you see in yourself, the more you see in others; everything is a mirror. Having better observation about others creates acceptance and understanding.
Let go of our past, our future, our baggage, our worries, our drama, our victim consciousness, (All of that stuff!) then we become free to exist as our more empowered self; we can live more in the presence; we can open up our consciousness, expand our awareness of the universe around us… imagine the possibilities!
And how do we do this you ask?
This is the eternal question of all time, and I can’t pretend to know that I have figured out the answer, as I still grapple with this daily. However in my experience of how to do this, is to find ways to get out of our minds and go into our feelings.
Here’s some actions you can take to practice being in the present:
- Act and Do. We need to all stop running around thinking and doing – we need to practice the art of ‘Act & Do’ which means you feel what is right then you do it. You don’t use thought to process thought – that just creates layers of thoughts and then your mind gets overwhelmed and then you get confused and then you don’t know what is right. So you just need to FEEL and not think; and just ACT & DO.
- Stop trying to be a super human. It’s OK, and good, to just be ‘ordinary’. Clean the house. Mow the lawn. Ever heard that phrase ‘chop wood, carry water’. Life isn’t about being ‘busy’. It’s about being. It can be more spiritual and fulfilling to serve your sanga by cleaning the toilet or cooking your family dinner than to play with crystals and preach. The best way to live in reality is wake up, and go to the bathroom. Have a shower. Go for a walk. Do the housework. Enjoy sharing and being with your loved ones. Just enjoy being in the moment. THAT is reality.
- Walk. Walk in the bush, or at the beach, any nature at all. As often as possible. And don’t look at your phone. That’s like taking the devil to church with you. Take the space to relax and tune into nature.
- Yoga. Practicing yoga is an excellent way to get in touch with your body. Done properly, in sync with the breath, it’s a very effective way to get energy moving around your body, and to help get you out of your mind and into your body. I notice a difference when I do yoga and I barely breathe, I’m stiff, I’m thinking, I’m not present, I’m wobbly, and I’m not in tune with my body. Whereas when I focus only on the yoga, and I move with the breath, I very soon find myself with a calm mind, I can feel my body, the whole practice flows better, I feel stronger, I can feel all my muscles, and I’m more in tune with myself.
- Hike. Like walking, being in nature is a wonderful way to relax and get away from being ‘busy’. It could be just a few hours, or a few days. I encourage you to go off grid, explore somewhere new, and be present in nature.
- Bike. Either a relaxing, or extreme bike ride on some trails by the ocean or on the trails is a fantastic way to get out of your mind and get into your body.
- Dance. Take dancing lessons. Learn to tango or do the latest line dance and put your body in motion. You’ll age better and feel better.
- Do ART. Humans are creative beings. I encourage you to create original expressive art from your feeling and imagination. I mean the paint your feelings type of art, not the ‘copy a picture’ type of art. True creativity is making something that doesn’t exist, or has not been seen before.
- Get in some water. Have a bath, swim in a pool under a waterfall, swim in the sea, just get in some water.
- Meditation and breathing exercises. It can be as simple as sitting in the park, or walking around the park, or even your garden, and letting your mind go still while you look at flowers in a focussed and intentional way.
- Be conscious of where you place your attention. Practice putting your attention onto things outside yourself. If you think about yourself too much you become too self obsessed and you don’t ‘see’ the people around you. So start looking at things and people around you more and observe them clearly. To go further, look into what interests you more than yourself? When you find what that is, focus on that.
- Feel into the things and people around you. Sense how they feel. Observe them on a deeper level. What’s going on for them. How are they reacting to you. Practice really tuning in and being present.
- Have fun, laugh, relax. Be around people who make you feel good. Be where you can be free of pretences or expectations or falseness. Be real, be messy, be crazy, be whatever. The right ones might give you shit to your face, but they will accept you no matter what.
- Get out there. If it’s just your soul that’s tired and not your body, then no amount of sleep or depression pills will help this. Talk to your soul. Tune into your feelings. What do you need? Wake up and live! Get out there and do stuff that makes you feel alive and that you are passionate about. Doing this GIVES you energy.
- Get creative in the kitchen. Do some cooking or baking if you find that therapeutic. Be creative with it. Invent a new recipe. Feed people you love. Creativity can be cooking. Don’t overthink it.
- Re-connect with people in real life. Keep in touch with people you care about. Go see them in person. Remember to connect with other people in real life; take away the screens and share with people. People are losing this connection; take away the technology barrier and reconnect.
- Put your devices away and switch off. Take away outside distractions. Go analogue. Go do something and leave your phone behind. Did you know that just by having a phone on the table at dinner reduces the quality of the conversation because part of your attention is on your phone. Leave it behind, lock it up or turn it off.
- Do some gardening. Real alive plants feel so good! Nurturing nature feels good! I find it grounding, relaxing, and peaceful. Plants respond to positive energy and kind words. Really. So love and nurture some plants. If you don’t have a garden, find different ways to enjoy the nature around you.
- Diary, journal, and reflect. It’s important to take time out to reflect on your thoughts, process your emotions, and tap into yourself. If you’d rather just reflect and breathe, do that. Walk or sit, and reflect. Walk on the beach and let your emotions all wash away into the sea. Throw every thought that comes into your head away into the breeze. If you’re into writing, write anything… your feelings. what inspires you. How bad you feel. What’s important to you. Anything!
People experience a variety of different things when working on creating change in their life, so whatever comes up for you, know that it’s OK, it’s part of the process, and it’s wise to breathe and go with it.
Learn the art of acceptance and surrender and go with the flow.
Move from one moment to the next and live day by day.
You may feel a lot of things come up for you when you are digging through the attic of your mind that may be hard to face – these are parts of yourself that have been locked in the recesses of your being are now all being cleared out and being dealt with which is perfect but can be hard. Just be aware you need to be strong and face everything that comes up and walk through that door, and it will clear.
When you get to a point where you can say ‘I am the master of myself. I know who I am and I am at peace with myself’ then no one can affect you or your peace of mind. If you speak your truth from your heart, you act with integrity and you honour yourself, this means you are coming from a balanced and clear place, where you realise you value and respect yourself and must put yourself first, always.
Then without noticing, over time, you will begin to act differently, think differently and live differently. Perhaps you’ll have feelings of inner joy, excitement, renewed trust and faith, feelings of increased strength and confidence, and feelings of energy and aliveness, that continue despite anything going on around you.
When you feel this, you have arrived home to yourself.