A Present Tense Life

Be Here Now. How many bumper stickers, t-shirts and blog entries have we seen this phrase appear on? It’s becoming that ubiquitous phrase that gets bandied about from in line at Starbucks (“I’m so stressed, my job is crazy, I have to get an agent and I’m behind on my Tivo..” “Everybody’s stressed, Dude, just be here now.”), to being offered as a mantra in yoga class (“Whatever you’ve been through today, you’re in yoga, so just be here now.”), to being texted ad infinitum. But what does it mean to really Be.Here.Now?

Being present is to consciously experience. Experience is a bodily function, not a thinking one. It means to smell, taste, touch, hear, see. Our thoughts are almost solely occupied with the past or the future. We think about where we’ve been and where we’re going, we focus on the lunch we just had and can’t wait to post about and who’ll reply that we can go to dinner with later. Spoiler alert – this great preoccupation of thinking uses a very small part of our brain (think Brittany on Glee). And it makes us miss the incredible amount of expansive information being noticed and taken in by our bodies.

So try this: Stop smelling. Right now, just stop smelling. (Okay, you can stop trying now because you can’t). Our bodies are continually taking in the information of our environment – not the thoughts of the environment, but the messages of it found in what our senses gather. In fact, it’s so much information that we select only a small amount to come in (subconsciously) and attend to an even more miniscule subset of that (consciously). To Be.Here.Now is to make all of this conscious. It’s to expand our spectrum of living.

Why is that important? On one very important level the world is a gift basket of delight. I recently walked with a friend and was almost overcome with the wet, heady scent of a rose bush in full, precocious bloom which my friend never noticed. I stopped to put my nose in one and she didn’t even notice that – she kept right on stomping to the end of the sidewalk barking to me about something that irritated her from work that day (past tense). Fortunately for her I called her back – we both stood in awe for several minutes enjoying this rose. That’s sweet – a little surprise in the day – but there’s something else about being present.

To be present is to know opportunity. Many people come to work with me because they can’t find their Path. One of the first steps of finding it is to learn to be present to experiencing so that when the stepping stones appear you’re able to even see them. Our bodies pick up loads of critical information throughout our day – if you don’t learn to pay attention to it, you’ll miss the road signs of the Big Map of You. Sure, you’ll still end up getting somewhere, it just probably won’t be the somewhere your real Self has in mind.

So how does it work? Being here now is about the body’s experiencing, so the first step is to be present to the experiencing. The next time someone tells you to be.here.now, the trick is to not think about “getting present”; instead, tune in to your senses. Ask yourself: What are the sounds in the room; what smell is most apparent around you; what temperature is it; can you feel the floor beneath your feet? That will start you on your way. The second way is to learn to speak in the present – from the mouth the mind follows.

In this video I talk about how to learn to speak in the present tense. I also talk about speaking about your dreams in the present tense. A little clue – dreaming is the language of experience. So paying attention to our dreams is also a step toward being.here.now.

Happy dreaming!