The present week
Introduction date - 19th of February 2008
Basic ideas
Focusing on the present and stopping the busy thought traffic is a path to spiritual enlightenment. It results in improvements in every area of life. I'll focus on the present moment as much as I can in the following week.
Goal
Measure the improvements of this attitude. Find out whether this could be a long term habit.
Updates
Introduction
For the next week, I'm going to focus as much as I can on the present moment. This idea sounds simple, but is pretty hard to execute and creates enormous positive effects.
Every time I notice my thoughts wandering into the future or past, I stop them. Actually, I don't think there is such thing as a thought related to present. Even judging what is now is related to my past experiences with like. Instead of thinking and judging, I'll direct my focus on breathing or my body overall.
The idea isn't to stop bringing up memories and planning the future. The constructive thoughts, created intentionally don't count. I want to stop thoughts that show up by themselves. I can't really call them productive or creative. They're like a negative tape playing in the background.
Due to it's numerous benefits, focusing on the present moment is all over the personal development stuff, either through meditation or simply by shifting the attitude. Personally, I got the idea from Eckhart Tolle's book, "The Power of Now".
Eckhart says that focusing on the here and now is the way to spiritual enlightenment. It leads us to full acceptance of what's happening, which actually brings our awareness into higher level. It helps us to get rid of lust related to future and regrets related to past. It benefits in literally every area of our lives.
When I stop the vocalized thoughts and focus on the present, I begin to feel a strongly positive mix of peace, happiness, acceptance and love. It takes a while to get those positive feelings. When I'm alone in my quiet room, it's a few seconds. At school it's more/less a minute. Anyway, I like that feeling a lot and it would be wonderful to walk around in such state all the time.
The biggest challenge will be to remember to focus on the present all the time. I tried it in the past and I was always losing focus within a few minutes. I can't fully rely on my good memory. I'll stick a plaster on my wrist as a memory booster. Every time I feel this plaster, I'll automatically remember it's purpose. And I'm going to feel it pretty often - practically every move of my wrist.
I expect improvements in most of my life's areas. As I'll be more focused on the present, I should get less frustrated after losing Warcraft 3 game. I'll play better I'll also play better as my concentration increases. I should be a better writer too, as the process of creating text is mostly unconscious and vocalized thoughts would only stop the flow.
Due to all those positive feelings, I expect myself to walk around smiling all day long. I'll be able to handle much more resistance during the day. This should lead to higher level of energy, motivation and mental clarity.
If my relationships weren't so damaged by my desire of loneliness, I'd notice huge improvement in that area. When we focus on the present, we can really BE there with people. Usually, when someone talks to us, we focus on ourselves anyways. We judge, make up opinions and evaluate the information this person delivers to us. As soon as we stop judging, our contact with others significantly increases.
We can feel unconditional love and acceptance towards everyone instead of creating problems and arguments out of nothing. We're just there, paying the person our full attention. That's something people will notice and appreciate a lot. That's something that heals relationships.
As I focus more on my body, it's health should improve. Simply because our body likes attention. It also likes positive feelings and positive attitude. I don't know how it works, but it does. The people who pay their their bodies more attention stay healthy. You can exercise, meditate or you can just focus on the present moment and your physical body as often as you can.
I'm going to note any improvements and difficulties. I wonder if it really brings long term positive effects I described above. I'd like to find out whether or not this could be a maintainable habit. Hopefully a week is enough time to find out. I need a solid time limit to keep myself motivated.
If I made this without brackets, motivation would fade out slowly. Now I just keep it at the peak for one week and let go after that. This can be more mentally challenging then it seems from the outside. Let's find out.