The Present is a Gift

In my yoga classes, I am always reminding my students to "stay present," to "let go of past and future," and "exist in the now." I know these things are easier said than done. That is why we practice. Yoga class is designed to practice skills that we can translate into our daily lives. Create healthy living routines. We must spend a lot of time undoing what harm our current habits have engrained in us. It is not wasted time, let me tell you. It is practice.

But the payoff is tremendous. When we are engaged in the present, we lose track of physical time, and exist in the joy of what it is we are doing. Sometimes these moments of "flow" are fleeting, and escape us easily, and sometimes these moments are stretched out like a peaceful blanket of contentment. The magic of the present is calming and inspiring at one time.


My mind draws to last week, spending time with my niece (see her gorgeous picture above). We were sitting on the couch, book on her lap. We paused at a page in the book to discuss, and I became totally engrossed in our conversation, which turned into an attempt of hers to pick my nose. Before I knew it, we were both laughing hysterically, the book slid to the ground, she toppled onto me, our faces red from trying to catch our breath. The whole episode was probably 2 minutes, but the point is that we had engaged each other's attention completely. Time had utterly escaped me, and I felt pure bliss in the moment.



And although those small moments of "flow" are precious, the point is to try to live your life in that way: to make each moment full of bliss by staying present. But it is so darn hard to do.

Tonight, while reading When Things Fall Apart, by Pema Chodron, it struck me that not only is staying present super hard, it can be downright scary. Ms. Chodron puts it best:


"Impermanence becomes vivid in the present moment; so do compassion and wonder and courage. And so does fear. In fact, anyone who stands on the edge of the unknown, fully in the present without reference point, experiences groundlessness. That's when our understanding goes deeper, when we find that the present moment is a pretty vulnerable place and that this can be completely unnerving and completely tender at the same time."


I guess I'd never really thought of the present moment as a vulnerable place, but it totally is. When one is present, one's guard is down to receive all the joy and comfort that exists, but also to experience the pain and suffering that may be lurking as well. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but asks the individual to be extremely open and accepting.


All we can do is practice. I know that my key to happiness is staying aware and in tune to what is happening now. And hard as it may be, I won't stop my practice of connecting with the present whenever I can. Maybe over time it will become easier. Perhaps those fleeting moments of bliss can be drawn out and experienced in longer and longer intervals. The possibility of life as a continual flow keeps me practicing, keeps me here, vulnerable, open to what is.



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