Sunshine: That’s my Jive

My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them-

Niyama:  A Simple Dudes Tale

Life unfolds in the present. Gotcha! However, every so often we let the present moment slip away from us, allowing time to float by unobserved. Squandering the precious seconds of our lives away as we worry about the future and ruminate about what’s happened in the not so distant past. We’re always doing “something“, yet we allow little time to practice stillness and calm.

Most of us don’t undertake our thoughts in awareness. Rather, our thoughts control every fabric of our being. Living in the moment (aka mindfulness) is a state of open attention on the present. When you become mindful, you realize that you are not your thoughts; you become an observer of your thoughts from moment to moment without judging them. Mindfulness involves being with your thoughts as they are, neither grasping at them nor pushing them away. Instead of letting your life go by without living it, you awaken to new experiences as they unfold around you.

Notes:

There are many paths to mindfulness and at the center of each, lies a Catch-22: You have to trust that the rewards of mindfulness will come and letting go of what you want is the only way to achieve this.