Being Present

I recently saw an advertisement for a children’s nutrient drink that was amusing and thought provoking.

In the ad that blamed nutritional deficiency for the lack of concentration, children put up questions like, “What if Newton had kept sleeping when the apple fell on him?” and, “What if during his Eastern conquest, Alexander the Great had gotten confused between his left and right?”

While it is true that a person with dietary deficiencies may find it difficult to concentrate, what really accounts for focus and presence is the Mind.

Many a times we are not giving our best to a situation because we are just not present in it. Our mind is on an ‘auto-pilot’ mode as a friend calls it and simply enacts and reads out its own script. That is why we sometimes get hit trying to pass through a glass door we never really saw. In the schuitemese terminology this is called Internal Dialogue and is a big deterrent to enabling a person from responding to a given situation appropriately.

I have had a chronic problem of Internal Dialogue since I was a kid. Perhaps that is why my frequency of forgetting where I put the car keys and the phone charger as well as hitting doors, walls, cabinets, gates, faucets etc has been incredible. The problem becomes even more pronounced when I sit down to write a piece; the mind wanders so far off that it’s difficult to reign and produce something worthwhile.

At Schuitema, we include an exercise for ‘Silencing the Inner Dialogue’ in all our workshops. What this does simply is to train the mind to coming back into the present by being attuned to the environment one is in. I have found that if done conscientiously every day and especially before doing something that requires focus, it can greatly expand my attention and focus.

Silencing the Inner Dialogue Exercise

1. Participants are asked to sit with their backs straight, legs unfolded, feet touching the ground and hands resting on the thighs.
2. They are asked to pick a colour and see all the things belonging to that color in the room. They are to repeat this with three different colours. For instance, spot all the things that are red in the room, followed by all things black in the room, followed by all things green in the room.
3. They are asked to close their eyes and focus on a sound outside the room. It could be the birds chirping, the sound of floors being swept or the traffic. They are then asked to shift their attention to sounds from within the room. Like colours, three sounds are to be focused on.
4. They are asked to wiggle the toes of a foot and focus attention on it. They are then asked to breathe deeply.
5. Finally, they can open their eyes.

Participants always remark how blank their mind feels after the exercise. It is in this state that the human mind is most alert, effective and productive.

Meditation techniques like yoga, sufic chants or simply prayers are actually meant to bring the mind to the its rightful place. Like Eckhart Tolle says in the ‘Power of Now’ that you are phenomenally more powerful than your mind.

In our observation, prayers or meditation following the exercise above can do wonders for expanding one’s concentration, focus and presence.

Paying Attention to the Present

Eckhart Tolle further states that the key to being present is to bring your mind to Now. In the Now there is no regret, guilt (feelings tied to the past) and no anxiety, fear (feelings tied to the future).

How can one arrive to NOW?

Simply by giving attention to the moment one is in.

For instance, I find that making chapattis is one of the best ways to bring your mind to the NOW. It is really an art to make the perfect chapatti. You have to give your fullest to the moment in ensuring that a given piece is perfectly round, thin, cooked and soft.

Perhaps that is why; the diaries of Leonardo Da Vinci, one of the most genius men that ever lived, was enraptured with NOW. He advised people to attune themselves to the trivia around them; feel the morsel bite into tiny pieces as it’s eaten, absorb the colour of a bright blue sky, smell the air and hear the universe.

Now has a beautiful and magical way of opening wonders should one pay attention. Insights, discoveries, inventions, nirvana… all exists in the NOW.

What seems trivial NOW may hold the key to some of the greatest wonders one might ever come across.

photo credit: Βethan, jima, and Nina Matthews Photography