Welcome to the Present Moment
You pick up a cherished teacup and it slips out of your fingers, falls on the floor and shatters. You leave the house and wonder if you turned off the oven. You say something hurtful to a friend and you feel regret the instant the words leave your mouth. You try to remember what you had for lunch yesterday, and you just can’t. The illness of a family member worries you night and day.
Such experiences are all too familiar to most of us. These actions are not a result of stupidity, meanness, disrespect or obsession. Rather, they are all part of the topography of the mindlessness common to most individuals in today’s world.
We handle a teacup, but we think about the past and our attention wanders.
We turn off the oven, but we get distracted in our hurry.
We speak without being aware of the words we choose because we want to have our opinions heard.
We eat with little regard for the amazing abundance of food in our culture.
We allow ourselves to worry about people, issues and events over which we have no control.
In truth, we spend most of our lives on autopilot, dimly aware of what is going on. It’s a form of “sleep living” (like “sleepwalking,” but more pervasive) and it’s robbing us—day in and day out—of the best part of our lives. Each moment that we spend in the past or future, in suffering or expectation, is a moment of non-living, of stolen time. Those moments are gone forever, irretrievable.
But there is a better place to dwell, and it’s as close to you as the tick of the next second, as immediate as your next breath. You can decide to wake up, pay attention, live each moment with purpose. You can intentionally drop your worrying, put away your daydreaming, abandon your dissatisfaction, still your thoughts. You can decide to become awake, alert and completely accessible to the present moment.
And the path to that availability is mindfulness.
The Mindfulness Wheel beckons you to dwell in each moment as it happens, and is ready to show you the way. This sounds simple enough, but for most of us, the present moment is an alien country. We need practice in developing mindfulness, in waking up, in becoming aware of life in the present.
This is role the Mindfulness Wheel can play. Used well, the Wheel can teach you to discard your habit life and begin living each moment at the edge of choice, intent and volition.
And as you go, you will find that mindfulness will begin to work its miracles.
Mindfulness brings you peace, ease and serenity.
Mindfulness gives you choices, not reactions.
Mindfulness reduces your stress, quells your anger, dismantles your unhappiness, soothes your grief.
You are invited. Come, spend some time on the Mindfulness Wheel, and watch the wonders unfold.
