How to Be Present

A deeper way to come back to the moment

Virtually every spiritual master teaches the importance of being present. Decades ago, Ram Dass wrote his seminal book, Be Here Now. More recently, Eckhart Tolle gave us The Power of Now.

It doesn’t matter which spiritual lineage or teacher you follow; we are constantly reminded to stay anchored in the current moment. We are taught about the unreality of the past and the future, and reminded that reality only truly exists right here, right now.

But a question frequently comes up: How do we actually become more present?

Given that most of us have been practicing not being present for the majority of our lives, how do we break that lifelong habit?

Many of us meditate with the goal of bringing greater presence to our lives.

Willpower and Self-Judgment

When people first try to practice presence, they usually approach the task with willpower. They make a concerted effort to focus on the present moment, be it a meal they are eating or their breath during meditation.

But inevitably, the mind wanders, and we judge ourselves for it. Ironically, this act of self-judgment is itself a form of non-presence. It is the mind stepping in to comment on and critique what just happened.

A Gentler Approach To Meditation

When we develop a better understanding of meditation, we learn to avoid self-judgment when our minds wander. We learn that when our focus drifts–and it will drift–we gently bring ourselves back to the breath or the mantra.

For a long time, I assumed that bringing ourselves back was the practice. Then, I read something that sparked a subtle but significant change in my practice.

What Keeps Pulling Us Away?

I was reading a brief passage in Michael (Mickey) Singer’s recent book, Wisdom Untethered. He wrote, “Instead of fighting for more focus, work on letting go of what takes your focus away.”

According to Mickey, we are already capable of being present, but something keeps pulling us away.

At first glance, this might sound like a minor distinction. Is it actually different from just bringing ourselves back?

My initial experimentation has revealed two key differences:

1. We Stop Skipping the Step of Observation

When we simply bring our minds back to the moment, we bypass the observation of our thoughts. We ignore the very thing that distracted us. In contrast, the process of letting go requires us to acknowledge the thought. Learning to witness our thoughts is a key takeaway of meditation. It is also an entrance to the present, because the thought is what is present.

2. We Release the “Compelling” Thought

Whatever pulls us away from the present moment is, at least temporarily, more compelling to our awareness. If we don’t consciously let go of that thought, its underlying pull is still there.

A More Complete Process

When we consciously let go of that which took us away, we aren’t just snapping ourselves back to the now. We are actively releasing the grip of that which was more attractive than the present.

It is a more complete process because we are present with the distraction before releasing it. We are dealing with what is standing between us and true presence.

Benefits of Presence

If you are watching television and you start thinking about the hike you will take tomorrow, it’s really not a big deal. So what, that your mind distracted you from a TV show?

The real benefits of presence come from dealing with the distractions of the ego mind. (See Our Problem with the Ego Mind and The Well-Intentioned but Incompetent Ego Mind.) When the ego mind tells us what to worry about or fear, when it engages in self-judgment and self-rejection, or when it claims we will only be okay in the future conditional upon getting and avoiding a whole list of things, these are the moments we really want to let go of the distractions and return to the present.

We want to recognize these messages and consciously let them go. Meditation can be an effective practice for learning to do exactly that: consciously letting go of what takes us away from the present.

(See also Missing the Greatest Movie Ever.)