We often hear so many people state the need of living in the present. “You’ve got to let go of the past, forget about the future, and live in the present. Keep yourself in the present.” As a result, many people find themselves desperately trying to live in the present by constantly keeping watch over their thoughts, ensuring that the past or the future doesn’t enter the mind. But, is this exactly what it means to live in the present? Does living in the present consist of this morbid introspection and the anxiety that comes along with it? I’ve previously discussed the true meaning of “mindfulness” (click here to read). In this post we’ll dive into what it really means to live in the present, and it may turn out to be something totally other than what you’ve understood it to mean up to this point!
Lost in Thought
The average human being anxiously rushes around life feeling like the weight of the world is on their shoulders. Although the rush is mostly the same monotonous routine everyday, they wander to the same places over and over as though lost. They are for the most part lost in thought. The chatter inside their brains is deafening, because the chatter is what matters! Chatter about bills and bank accounts, friends and foes, time limits, deadlines, arguments from the morning, arguments from last month, regrets of past decisions, worry about future ones… On and on this chatter goes.
The funny thing is that it is the chatter that matters, and yet, the chatter has no matter; it’s immaterial! You can’t take words from this chatter and hold them in your hands. They are practically imaginary. Yet, they hold so much power over those who are unknowingly drowning in the sea of it.
On Guard!
Sometimes, for whatever reason, one of these drowning people will surface and get a glimpse of, or at least the hope of, the clean, fresh air above the chatter sea. So, they begin to search for a way out or for help. Sometimes they’re met with the encouragement to “guard your thoughts! Stay present, be present, keep your thoughts from all of the worrisome chatter, and stay right here, right now!”
The person then proceeds to watch their thoughts, keeping their minds set on the here and now. When a thought of the past begins to show itself, the practitioner stops it with force and brings their attention to their breath, or hand, or steering wheel, or pencil, or whatever is there at that moment. But, what they begin to notice is that more and more unwanted stuff seems to consistently require squashing or beating back! Anxiety wells up, because “I’ve been lost in thoughts of the past for 20 minutes! I keep losing myself in thought again! When will this end?” So, the need to watch as a prison guard strengthens.
Bad Thoughts
Now, the analogy of a prison guard implies that any thoughts that aren’t of the immediate and exact present are bad. One must keep them away to be right, to be good, to be enlightened, to be present. Guilt is associated with bad, so anytime we allow a “non-present” inkling of anything we begin to feel a little guilty. The more guilty the person feels, the stronger the prison guard needs to become.
Control is tightened. “I must control my thoughts! I must control the monkey mind! I must control my self! I must control the ego!” Etc. Etc.
In reality, control is a product of the thoughts themselves. Control is the hand of the ego. Control is the opposite of what is truly desired.
Illusion of Control
It may come as a surprise to read this, but the truth is that one is never actually in control. Control is an absolute illusion. It is an illusion that you’ve had control of anything at all in your entire life. Furthermore, to imagine that one is controlling their thoughts is laughable. Thoughts simply occur. You do not control them.
If you were to disagree with me about this, I would ask the question, “Well, who is it that is controlling the thoughts?” If I believe that I am in control of my thoughts, or that I can control my thoughts, who is it that has this control? Isn’t this thought of control simply just that, another thought? So how can thought control thought? This would be the snake eating its own tail.
Likewise, your decisions over which you imagined that you had complete control were made by these happenings called thoughts. Uncontrolled happenings. You could have done nothing other than what you did in the past, because it wasn’t something you could have controlled, or that you happened to lose control of. You never had control to lose in the first place!
It is Not Controlling Thoughts
Therefore, living in the present, or remaining present, has nothing to do with controlling one’s thoughts. This is an impossibility. It actually has nothing to do with the past or the future at all! It is not keeping guard over one’s thoughts, attempting to squash every sign of a past or future thought presenting its ugly, bad head. Yes, this means that you can relax… You can stop feeling guilty. You can stop obsessing over your thoughts and keeping them tightly focused on the “present”.
Living in the present has nothing to do with force or taking control of the “monkey mind”.
Letting Go of Control
What living in the present really means is something that comes out of a deep understanding of all that’s been discussed above, but more than that, a deep understanding of who you really are. A deep understanding of what this is. By this I mean existence, the truly unnameable thusness of reality. And out of this deep understanding of the thusness of reality comes a trust and a letting go. Letting go of all illusion (all of it!) and simply floating along not with, but AS the stream of the energy of existence itself.
Living in the present is letting go of the illusion of controlling one’s thoughts. Letting thoughts of past, present, and future occur as naturally as they do, and not feeling the absurdity of guilt for any of it. Letting go of the anxiety that is the necessary side-effect of the illusion of control, and trusting that the flow of the energy of existence is all that is happening in this moment that is eternity itself. Letting go of the judgment that comes as a result of “losing control”. Letting go of ultimate ideas of good and bad, because all of what is happening in this moment is the entirety of existence flowing in the forms of it all. It all goes together as one, single, perfect process. In fact, perfect has no meaning in this context, because perfect implies imperfect which is also an impossibility.
Thought Disappears
After all the attempts at control, after all the anxiety of life and its scary unpredictableness, when one reaches this realization of their true self-nature as the energy of the whole of existence, one then ironically finds thought to disappear.
So, in other words, living in the present turns out to be a thoughtless place afterall! But, it doesn’t come as a result of control. It also doesn’t mean that thoughts never occur. Thoughtlessness simply means letting go of the illusion of control and floating with and as the energy of existence. “You” are not producing and controlling the thoughts, and so, “you” are thoughtless…even when thoughts happen, even thoughts of the past and of the future. You are existence itself, not a drowning little ego obsessed with the anxieties of thought and the rushing around of what so many think is “life”.
It truly is an amazing experience of existence to float along as the stream of existence itself! To experience the dropping of control. To experience the natural processes of the brain, body, mouth, and all that goes along with these in the same way that one experiences the sun “rising”, the universe expanding, and butterflies flying.
So, whether you find yourself with thoughts happening of the past, or of the future, you don’t have to suddenly make yourself be in the present. Thoughts of the past and future are happenings in the present, and you are entire existence that contains them all, right here, right now.
Relax…
I don’t say to you, “Control your thoughts, don’t think about the past, don’t think about the future.” I say to you, “Relax. Let go. Know thyself!” You are all that is, beyond good or bad, beyond thought; now watch yourself flow in perfect motion.
In this way, live in the present.
Further Reading
My use of the word “existence” is like the Chinese word Tao in Taoist philosophy. If you’d like to read more about these ideas, I recommend the following:
Tao: The Watercourse Way by Alan Watts
Tao for Now: Wisdom of the Watercourse (New book of Alan Watts’ transcripts)
Present Your Spontaneous Thoughts (Ha!)
How does this sit with you? Let me know below by leaving a comment or reaching out through email!