Live In The Present

Everything you think and feel reflects who you are. If you think and feel from a superficial level of awareness, that is who you are. To dive deeper into yourself and, hopefully, to get to that place where you are love, compassion, trust, and truth, you have to follow the path of your present responses.

Someone who feels unloved can still find love in its purest form, but he will have to work through the layers of resistance that block the feeling of pure love. Your present emotions reflect the present state of your nervous system with all its past imprints.

Whenever you have an experience, these imprints enter into your response, which means that most of your reactions are echoes from the past. You do not really live in the present.

However, at least you are reacting in the present, and that is where the search for your true self begins. Your emotions are the most present-centered thing you have. An emotion is a thought linked to a sensation. The thought is usually about the past or the future, but the sensation is in the present.

Your mind quickly links sensations with thoughts, but when we were infants, our first experience and emotions were much closer to physical sensations. We had no inhibitions or second thoughts about crying when we were wet, cold, lonely, frightened, etc. Our minds didn’t know those powerful words bad and no. Bad teaches you that certain thoughts are shameful; no teaches you to resist your own impulses.

More complex words and interpretations came later. As adults, when we deny ourselves the immediate experience of an emotion, a screen of words is out up by the mind, and this throws us out of the present and into either the past or the future. To feel an emotion fully and completely, to experience it and then release it, is to be in the present, the only moment that never ages.

Adapted from Ageless Body, Timeless Mind, by Deepak Chopra (Three Rivers Press, 1998).

Read more: Spirit, Deepak Chopra's Tips, emotions, physical, present, true self

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of
Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Tim C.

2:17PM PDT on Oct 30, 2011

thanks

send a green star

Ida J.

1:32PM PDT on Sep 30, 2011

Ji H.

11:48AM PDT on Jun 28, 2011

I have known people who live in the past. Their comments and reactions stem from happenings in the past. And, I have known people who live in the future. They set aside actions to wait for the opportune time, which never comes, and they put aside even material things for a better time which never comes. It is important to recognize the present as it unfolds.

loreto q.

11:00PM PDT on Jun 26, 2011

beautiful

Jane H.

2:22PM PDT on Jun 26, 2011

wonderful post----this has taken me a life time.

Rose K.

8:06AM PDT on Jun 26, 2011

noted thanks

Uma C.

1:31PM PDT on Jun 25, 2011

Kirsten wherever our attention is focused material and people are attracted to us by the similarity of vibration.

1:28PM PDT on Jun 25, 2011

Species that focus basically in the present have that spontaneous edge that often is the fine line between survival and death. We work to place ourselves in that moment of NOW, where multitudes of paths offer themselves, that can only be perceived in NOW awareness.Our natural process due to the challenges of our nature is to become hypnotized by established paths, wearing blinders to keep our focus plodding forward in the same old way and exhausting ourselves with boredom, missing all the potentials offered around us. That's why I have to live with other species focused in the moment . I live with 6 cats and they anchor me in NOW preserving my sanity.

Kirsten B.

1:05PM PDT on Jun 25, 2011

Good advice. Strange - suddenly information on being present and living in the Now is everywhere - never seemed to encounter it before I started exploring it a couple of months ago - or maybe I just wasn't ready to understand and absorb it ...

James R. S.

10:24AM PDT on Jun 25, 2011

I certainly agree with the above ideas. BUT: I definitely Disagree with having to look at womens' underwear. This is a public
outlet. Get your Underwear out of it. Period.