I vividly recall the day I bought Ram Dass' now classic book, [Remember] Be Here Now right after I saw it in the window of a local bookstore in autumn of 1971, a square, purple tome with tall white lettering, and a mandala of sorts with an empty chair at its epicenter. I was a fifteen year old hippie teenager, and had been reading books on Eastern spiritual and mystical practices for several years, but this book was from a totally different plane because it was heavily flavored with psychedelic-speak due to Ram Dass' explorations with LSD during that time period. The book oozes acid-trippiness and free-form spiritual jazz, and yet its core message was as both deep and simple then as it is today: do your best be mindfully awake and aware in every present moment, as that is all that exists; the past is gone and the future hasn't happened yet.
What is unfortunate is that many of us take for granted that because we are alive in this moment, we will also be alive in the next one … and the next, and the next, and the next. We have too much on our minds and on our plates to be constantly aware that any given moment can (and eventually will) reflect our last act this body, in this place. It's just too depressing and morbid to have that fact added on top of all else we are dealing with. However, if we can learn how to frame our lives, moment-by-moment, with that underlying awareness without depression and morbidity accompanying it, (perhaps) we can more clearly see the present as a present and honor it with both grateful reverence and strong conscientiousness.
Back in the early '70s when I was reading Be Here Now, I was also reading Carlos Castenada's books for the first time, and one of the things that stood out for me then was how Carlos' mentor, don Juan Matus discussed death. He wrote in Journey to Ixtlan:
"The thing to do when you’re impatient is to turn to your left and ask advice from your death. An immense amount of pettiness is dropped if your death makes a gesture to you, or if you catch a glimpse of it, or if you just have the feeling that your companion is there watching you."
By bringing mindfulness deliberately to our daily lives, we can purposefully embrace its ability to re-mind us to drop our pettiness (plus its dark behavioral allies), as well as our tendency to take life for granted. We can also choose to be more consciously aware that everything we do, no matter what the arena is and no matter who the people within it are – every scenario is an integral, interconnected part of our everyday, eyes open mindfulness practice.
Being that we celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas this week by giving gifts to our loved ones, seeing the present in the present is a gift we can give to ourselves. Consciously doing our best to choose to treat each moment of our lives with the grateful reverence and strong conscientiousness they are worthy of, as we never know which one will be our last is worthy of re-minding ourselves us. Here is a simple question we can ask ourselves that will bring us back to mindful attention of this reality:
"Knowing the choices I make in each moment today could frame my last act on Earth, what will I choose for them to be?"
Wishing you joy and peace this holiday season.
© Suzanne Matthiessen, innerevolution media
Website: TheMind-BodyCoach.com
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