Be Here Now

Ram Dass's Be Here Now pretty much says it all, maybe.

Be here now.  Be here now.  Don't be thinking about the future worrying or thinking about the past sulking.  Just enjoy whatever his happening in your life right now at this very moment.  Remove all context.  Waiting in line?  Anxious?  Want to get it over with so you distract yourself with games or torture yourself by dragging out every moment by thinking about the future?  Try just being here, now.

Being here now is the point of meditation.  Just close your eyes, or soften your gaze, focus on being here now.  Focus on your breathing.  Your breathing happens endlessly, like waves on a shore, so you never have to be anxious to see if the next one will come and they are not interesting enough to dwell on the thought of a particular breath.  Each breath is exactly the same, and will be exactly the same as the next.  If you focus on each breath that comes and goes you are living in the exact moment of that breath. You are riding the waves of the here and now.

imagine your life as a needle on a record player, there are waves that move up and down, the future is spinning towards you and the past is spinning away form you, you are articulating the present reality as is washes under you or over you.  We only exist in the here and now anyway!

We don't exist in the future and we don't exist in the past but as a shadow of what is happening here and now.

Calm your mind and be present in exactly where you physical body is in space and time.  That is meditating.

I wonder if animals can see as far ahead on the record of time as we can?  We can stress about it, worrying about how long something will take or all of the dangerous possibilities that lie in our uncertain future.  The problem is that we have 20/20 vision and can imagine with great detail the future.  With other animals I imagine that they have a vague sense of if the future holds much danger, but for the most part I think they exist in the here and now.

All of our stuff we carry and possess is based on humans looking into the future.  Stock pile for bad times, make weapons to defend or attack other humans in the future.  Attacking requires plans.  Animals hunt, which requires the ability to be in a state of zen, of attuning all of your senses to the here and now as to not make a false move.  Every step the cheetah takes gets him one step closer to a blurry future that involves him eating, but if he makes a wrong step by not focusing on the here and now, his immediate future will not be him eating.  We humans do not need to worry so much about being in the here and now to survive, so we don't do it.  We are out of practice.  It's like hitting a zen state.  It's a special thing that only happens every once in a while when you can get your brain to turn off it's thinking and just open up to the now.  But as we meditate or do yoga, we practice and get better at it.  Our minds calm more easily, we can focus on the task at hand or appreciate the things that are right in front of us.  We are optimistic about the future because we know that we need not worry about every detail.  Every passing moment, our future options ring is getting smaller and more manageable.  We can focus on our own happiness and not strain our consciousnesses by trying to focus on the distant future.  We can never see the whole picture anyway because the disk is too big.