Tilting Back to the Present Moment

In the book, Milkman, by Anna Burns, the protagonist describes a moment where she is so completely involved in what she is doing - so connected to that very moment - that she forgets everything else.  She doesn’t just forget what she is supposed to do next, or what she’d been doing the moment before, she forgets everything that she had ever known.  

We can have a similar experience when we connect deeply with the present moment in meditation - in a breathing practice, for example.  All that mental “stuff” that accumulates with each passing day, that builds up into an ever-thickening film between ourselves and our lived experience, is suddenly gone.  It may be for only one breath, or for even just part of one breath, but we can feel the liberation, the expansiveness, the sense of relief, the sudden ease of being.  

If you think about it, this is how we enter the world, and then our present-moment awareness gets learned out of us gradually.  Whereas, as a child we were firmly rooted in the present moment, with the occasional tug into a non-present moment (usually at the behest of an adult), with each passing year, the see-saw tilts further in the non-present direction, and our access to the present moment becomes the rarer occasion.  

But the good news is we have neuroplasticity.  We can re-learn how to connect with the present moment.  It just takes practice, one breath at a time.  Each time we notice that we aren’t directly connected to our experience of being in the present moment, we can redirect and touch back to it by placing our attention on the sensations of the breath, or we can tune in to the sounds around us, or even sense into the feeling of our feet on the floor.  And little by little, more of our moments are spent without all that mental “stuff”, without that thick film between us and our lived experience.  We’re free.

We hope you can join us this week as we tilt the see-saw back to the present moment.

May all beings everywhere, without exception, feel the ease of being in the present moment,
Your CMP Family

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In these challenging times, your support is more important than ever. As a nonprofit, we can’t cancel our needs to fundraise. We need your donations to continue offering meditation sessions.CMP is a licensed charity in the state of CT as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Checks can be mailed to Community Mindfulness Project, P.O. Box 1713, New Canaan, CT 06840. Credit cards are accepted at www.CommunityMindfulnessProject.org. Thank you!