Many people ask me, pretty much on a daily basis, what mediation actually feels like. For those who practice, many of them want to know whether they’re doing it right. Others are just purely interested. This is hard to describe because the feeling of reaching and breaking through the narrow gateway that is the present moment is different for everyone.
Not in the way that some people may like different football teams for different reasons. For this, instead, imagine that you close your eyes right now. Now imagine that when you re-opened them, you were sitting on a glorious peak of a mountain, looking out over green fields, a soft, warm breeze in the air as you watch the most incredible sunset you’ve ever witnessed.
The sky looks like it’s on fire and everything seems so still. This is a true human instance where you have broken through into the present moment. You are left truly and utterly speechless by just how beautiful life is.
This is where your bills, what you’re going to eat next week, or wondering how many notifications you’ve got on social media are one of the furthest concerns in your mind. In fact, you’re free of them. Every single cell in your body is in tune with the split moment of time and space that your being is currently in.
This is what the present moment feels like.
The Present Moment
Of course, there is a certain beauty and awe in the scene which I described above. That’s because we’re so far out of touch with the present moment, it takes something as powerful as that scene to break everything else down, so we’re left with just Now.
However, through meditation, this is the kind of mindset we can achieve. Being real, there is beauty in every aspect of our lives. From the city hustle and bustle outside our window to the bird sitting in a tree in a rural village.
The problem is that we’re so caught up with life and trying to get through each and every day, especially if we’re operating within a comfort zone, that we get used to seeing them and can no longer see the beauty. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not there.
Have you ever come out of meditation session, one where your mind was focused on the breath the whole time, and you were distracted minimally by thoughts? Do you remember how when you opened your eyes, everything seems brighter, like the lighting and the colours of the objects around you? Do you remember hearing the sounds in the room, outside the room, and outside the building?
This feeling is one of Presence and living in the Now moment.
The Past, the Present and the Future
I fear that too many people in this modern-age have fallen into a trap. This is where you can imagine all of time on a timeline. Imagine on one end you have the past, in the middle, you have the Now, and at the other end you have the future.
Now, if your mind is primarily focused on the past and the future, this leaves a time gap where you’re not focused on the present. This has been suggested over and over again to be the reason why levels of anxiety, depression and stress have risen considerably over the last few decades.
This absence is a clear way of showing how we’re not focused on the present moment. By practising meditation, we can train our minds to get back into the present moment, so we can start enjoying life fully once again.
