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Transcript Episode 08: Life in the Present Moment

0:01:15.2 JA: Welcome friends to, Life is the Practice. We hear about the importance of living in the present and intuitively we understand how that is a good thing, but most of us also ask, how does that integrate with having everyday plans and goals and dealing with the practical needs of modern life. Today we’re exploring, are these two things mutually exclusive. We will also talk about the main obstacles we face when it comes to living in the present, the practices that help us overcome these roadblocks, and how to integrate both, being and doing. Let’s go. In one way or another, all the spiritual manuals say we must live in the present moment to lead a life of abundance, this is because the spiritual realization or conscious connection to life is an experience that can only happen in our bodies in the present moment, the famous here and now. We should remember that being present means holding attention to the experience of the present moment instead of losing it in thought.

0:00:06.9 Juan Alvarez: Won’t you like to be a better parent or a partner? Are you ready to break free from unwanted habits and get over the burden of the past? Maybe you would like to develop a healthier relationship with money or with food, or be able to lead with compassion. In all those matters, mindfulness can be a catalyst of change, and a resource that you can always tap into. My name is Juan Alvarez, and I’m an Executive Coach and a mindfulness teacher, a teacher and a guide or a companion for people looking for attainable ways of being more present, peaceful and conscious in their lives. I’ve dedicated my life to exploring how mindfulness and meditation improve our relationship with the world and with the people around us. So tune in, if you want to build a solid meditation routine and learn different techniques that will also enhance the only practice that truly matters when it comes to being purposeful. Life itself.

0:02:16.2 JA: If you want to learn more about cultivating presence, check out episode 3 where I cover this topic in detail. If we think in concrete terms about the concept of living in the present, the truth is that it doesn’t make much sense, it might even seem absurd when we think about it. “What’s for dinner?” “Oh, I don’t know, I only live in the present moment.” “Where are we going on vacation?” “Sorry, present moment only.” So what then do we really mean when we talk about staying present in the real world? Living in the present is the constant exercise of making the present moment the focal point of my experience instead of losing my attention to involuntary thought processes. It is about taking control of our attention and replacing over-thinking with presence, balancing our experience. Very often, without our permission, the mind takes us out of the present moment and into the fantasy of thought in a place and a time that doesn’t exist. Reflecting on it, we can see that this spontaneous thought processes are responsible for much of our emotional discomfort.

0:03:24.3 JA: If we go to the future, we feel fear and anxiety, if we go to the past, sadness, guilt, regret. If we look honestly at the fact, we see that most of our thought processes are redundant and pointless, they don’t add value to our lives, but they do take a lot of energy from us, an energy that we don’t have available to deal with the things that really need our attention. Living in the present then is letting go of compulsive and unnecessary thinking, that is the source of so many of our problems, focusing instead on moments of presence and deep connection to life. It is learning to control our attention and instead of our thoughts controlling us, we use thought as a tool to manage the practical aspects of life. After all, life is what’s happening in this moment, here and now, everything else is a thought about life, a mental process through which we ruminate about our vital situation.

0:04:21.7 JA: Let me explain what I mean. Here and now, I’m in my living room, sitting on the sofa with my cat, there is a soft piano melody playing in the background, the evening light streams through the windows, creating a warm and welcoming atmosphere around me, this is life here and now, it’s a beautiful moment. Meanwhile, in my mind, thoughts about my vital situation are constantly spinning. Maybe you’re familiar with this type of mental noise, the expense budget for this month, the uncertainty of how my business will evolve, the difficult conversation I had with my mother last week, the desire I have to go on a vacation. In most cases, these thought processes do not require immediate action from my end, in fact, in many cases, they are mere fantasies with not factual basis, unnecessary processes that add nothing to my experience, but deprive me from the gift that the present brings.

0:05:23.1 JA: At first, the idea of not thinking all the time can seem abstract and unrealistic, but as we develop the skill of presence, it becomes less confusing, we learn to detach from compulsive thought processes, instead returning again and again to the present, the center of our experience.

0:05:42.9 JA: Okay, let’s explore now how to reconcile life in the present moment with making plans and setting goals. Living in the present is not about denying the need to plan for the future, not at all, it is about actively managing our thought processes, making it an intentional activity rather than our default. Through attention training, with the exercises that I will mention later, a conscious person develops the ability to permanently observe as an impersonal witness their mental and emotional processes and their ability to bring attention to the present and surrender to it.

0:06:19.2 JA: The mind no longer dominates their experiences, but they dominate the attention and do not let it get lost in thought. It is about reducing thought to a conscious and deliberate mental exercise that I use when I have to manage the practical affairs of life, and returning attention to the present when I do not need to continue thinking, rejecting the permanent invitation of the mind to continue interacting with a mental content. Just as we schedule a strategic planning session for our businesses or make a shopping list, there are times when we think, analyze and use information from the past to predict and plan for the future, set goals and intentions, make decisions and draw up plans. But these are just mental exercises, and when the exercise ends, we return to alignment with the present moment. Presence and surrender, here and yes.

0:07:14.4 JA: The thing is to develop our ability to set boundaries for our thoughts and to strengthen the control of our attention. There are countless moments every day when we don’t need to think, in the elevator, in the shower, in line at the coffee shop. The ego’s big lie is that to survive we have to be thinking all the time, or things are going to go wrong. It seems that we are managing life, but in reality, we’re being managed by the mind. It is worth mentioning that once plans are drawn up, we should not attach to them, instead we understand them as an intention for the movement, a point of reference to manage the practical aspects of life, but they remain flexible and let life flow without rigidity. As the spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle said, “Life is the dancer, you are the dance”.

0:08:05.3 JA: As usual, I want to remind you that what leads us to our growth and evolution is the practice. Without taking action this podcast episode remains just a bunch of words that hardly add value to our experience. The meditations of presence, inner presence and alignment are the most useful to help us develop the skills that I have mentioned in this episode, concentration, present moment awareness, and alignment. In addition to our meditation practice, it is vitally important that we integrate the same mindfulness of skills into our daily lives, in the moment when we’re not meditating. Here now, as I’m listening to this podcast, I become present and surrender to the experience of this moment. Presence and surrender. Here, yes, moment after moment, little by little, I recognize more moments in which I do not need to follow thought and I align more and more with life, which unlocks awareness of the deep self and activates intuitive insight.

0:09:10.1 JA: This awareness fills me with peace and joy of being, with gratitude for life itself, and with confidence and security in being. There are other medications that will help us, but these are the fundamental ones. If you’re interested in learning more, I suggest you explore my online course, The Practice, it’s a complete guide to integrating mindfulness into your life, step-by-step. Regarding becoming aware of our deep being, our essential identity, I want to end this episode with a brief note about a conundrum that get me stuck in my process for some years, how to reconcile being with doing. For a long time, they seemed like opposites to me, either I am in the consciousness of being or I participate in the activities of every day life, but both things seemed impossible at the same time. Here are my two cents on this topic, I believe the fundamental error is understanding our awareness of being as something passive, motionless, something that can only happen in the stillness.

0:10:13.8 JA: I think this happens to us because for most of us, the way we learn to become present is through meditation or similar practices, we withdraw from the world, we remain still. Sometimes the mind also remains still, and our essential nature is revealed little by little. This leads us to the confusion that to observe our essential nature, we have to remain still, and that if we move normally this understanding fades. So either I am aware, or I do and I move normally. It seems that both experiences can’t happen simultaneously. Many people are still there and do not understand that the awareness of being and doing are not mutually exclusive, and they think that in order to be dissolved in the essential identity, they have to stop doing things and be passive. This is not true. Obviously, our essential being does not disappear with movement or our activities, being encompasses everything, and our ability to observe the essential being in movement is something that is also developed with the practice of active observation.

0:11:25.9 JA: The point is that most people never get to practice at this level and they stay in meditative contemplation. While it is very useful to develop our deep contemplation skills in meditation, retreat it from the world in silence. We also have to bring these skills into normal life and start looking there, in our meetings, where we cook, in the car. It is about creating a strong foundation, a deep and consistent presence that holds steady as you move through the world. That is to say, when I enter an activity, I do not lose the presence and consciousness of the deep being. The point is that, many times when I take action, I get distracted and I get into thinking. You have to train to develop a solid presence that is maintained during the activity. I believe that this is the challenge to which life is calling us now. It is no longer enough, or for most of us even an option to retire to a month inside in pursuit of uninterrupted meditation and mystical experiences.

0:12:31.7 JA: We are being called upon to do the work of integrating this awareness of being as something natural in our experience and living the spirituality of everyday life. In the family meal, in the sales meeting, in the coffee shop, during rush hour traffic jams and noise, so that our essential qualities, peace, love, compassion, can reach the real world. The retreat is over, friends. Life is the practice.

0:13:01.4 JA: Well friends, in our next episode we will talk about how the practice helps us in our partner relationships. I hope to meet you there.

0:13:14.2 JA: Thank you for listening to this episode of Life is the Practice Podcast. If you found it valuable, please subscribe, leave us a review, you might help others live better, and if you want to learn more about the practice, please explore the online course that is available to you at lifeisthepracticepodcast.com. Thank you and be well, friends.