What Are You Bringing into the Now? by Gina Lake
Here is another guest post from my wife, Gina Lake's, blog. Gina's blog is located on the home page of her website at www.radicalhappiness.com, which is dedicated to spiritual awakening and living in the Now. It provides tools for moving out of the ego and into the Now, where true happiness--radical happiness--lies. This is an excerpt from her book Embracing the Now: Finding Peace and Happiness in What Is, available on Amazon.com.
The only thing that exists is the present moment, the Now, but we, as human beings, have a particular relationship with our thoughts that takes us out of the experience of the moment. Thoughts create an alternate reality, a subplot to the Now. We get lost in that pretend subplot and don’t notice other things about the moment. When we bring that alternate reality into the moment, our experience of the Now changes. It colors the Now. We are no longer experiencing the moment purely, but through the lens of the ego, which generates our thoughts and feelings.
Our thoughts and feelings come and go in the Now. But unlike sights, sounds, and the other things that come and go in the Now, thoughts and feelings change our experience of the Now when we identify with them. Nothing else that comes and goes in the Now has the same effect on our experience of the moment. The Now is just what it is, but our experience of it changes if we are identified with thoughts or feelings. If we aren’t identified with a thought or a feeling, we will feel the peace of the Now. If we are identified with a thought or a feeling, we will feel anxious, restless, discontent, and possibly some other negative feelings.