15 Steps On How to Forgive by Master Wayne Dyer

Wayne Dyer was my first go-to as a Spiritual Healer. Many things occurred that left me hopeless, helpless and alone 6 years ago. I picked up one of his books, and was able to shift immediately to a better place in my mind in forgiveness.

It didn't last long. I didn't do the work. But, I devoted 1.5 years to finding ME, and allowing feelings to come, accept and let go, FOR ME.

It is a beautiful place to be. LOVE YOURSELF. FORGIVE. HAVE GRATITUDE. SERVE OTHERS.
BE LOVE. THERE IS NOTHING ELSE!

HOW TO FORGIVE
BY WAYNE DYER

Forgiving others is essential for spiritual growth.  Your experience of someone who has hurt you, while painful, is now nothing more that a thought or feeling that you carry around. These thoughts of resentment, anger, and hatred represent slow, debilitating energies that will dis-empower you if you continue to let these thoughts occupy space in your head. If you could release them, you would know more peace.

Below I share how to forgive someone who has hurt you in 15 steps:

Step 1: Move On to the Next Act

Your past history and all of your hurts are no longer here in your physical reality. Don’t allow them to be here in your mind, muddying your present moments. Your life is like a play with several acts. Some of the characters who enter have short roles to play, others, much larger. Some are villains and others are good guys. But all of them are necessary, otherwise they wouldn’t be in the play.Embrace them all, and move on to the next act.

Step 2: Reconnect to Spirit

Make a new agreement with yourself to always stay connected to Spirit even when it seems to be the most difficult thing to do. If you do this, you will allow whatever degree of perfect harmony that your body was designed for to proliferate. Turn your hurts over to God, and allow Spirit to flow through you.
Your new agreement with reality in which you’ve blended your physical self and your personality with your spiritual God-connected self will begin to radiate a higher energy of love and light. Wherever you go, others will experience the glow of your God consciousness, and disharmony and disorder and all manner of problems simply will not flourish in your presence. Become “an instrument of thy peace,” as St. Francis desires in the first line of his famous prayer.

Step 3: Don’t Go to Sleep Angry

Each night as I drift off to sleep, I adamantly refuse to use this precious time to review anything that I do not want to be reinforced in the hours of being immersed in my subconscious mind. I choose to impress upon my subconscious mind my conception of myself as a Divine creator in alignment with the one mind. I reiterate my I ams, which I have placed in my  imagination, and I remember that my slumber will be dominated by my last waking concept of myself. I am peaceful, I am content, I am love, and I attract only to myself those who are in alignment with my highest ideals of myself.

This is my nightly ritual, always eschewing any temptation to go over any fear of unpleasantness that my ego might be asking me to review. I assume the feeling in my body of those I am statements already fulfilled, and I know that I’m allowing myself to be programmed while asleep, for the next day I rise knowing that I am a free agent.

In sleep man impresses the subconscious mind with his conception of himself. — Neville Goddard

Step 4: Switch the Focus from Blaming Others to Understanding Yourself

Whenever you’re upset over the conduct of others, take the focus off those you’re holding responsible for your inner distress. Shift your mental energy to allowing yourself to be with whatever you’re feeling — let the experience be as it may, without blaming others for your feelings. Don’t blame yourself either! Just allow the experience to unfold and tell yourself that no one has the power to make you uneasy without your consent, and that you’re unwilling to grant that authority to this person right now.

Tell yourself that you are willing to freely experience your emotions without calling them “wrong” or needing to chase them away. In this way, you’ve made a shift to self-mastery. It’s important to bypass blame, and even to bypass your desire to understand the other person; instead, focus on understanding yourself.

By taking responsibility for how you choose to respond to anything or anyone, you’re aligning yourself with the beautiful dance of life. By changing the way you choose to perceive the power that others have over you and you will see a bright new world of unlimited potential for yourself and you will know instantly how to forgive and let go of anything.

Step 5: Avoid Telling People What to Do

Avoid thoughts and activities that involve telling people who are perfectly capable of making their own choices what to do. In your family, remember that you do not own anyone. The poet Kahlil Gibran reminds you:

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you . . .

This is always true. In fact, disregard any inclination to dominate in all of your relationships. Listen rather than expound. Pay attention to yourself when you’re having judgmental opinions and see where self-attention takes you. When you replace an ownership mentality with one of allowing, you’ll begin to see the true unfolding of the Tao in yourself and other people. From that moment on, you’ll be free of frustration with those who don’t behave according to your ego-dominated expectations.

Step 6: Learn to Let Go and Be Like Water

Rather than attempting to dominate with your forcefulness, be like water: flow everywhere there’s an opening. Soften your hard edges by being more tolerant of contrary opinions. Interfere less, and substitute listening for directing and telling. When someone offers you their viewpoint, try responding with: “I’ve never considered that before—thank you. I’ll give it some thought.”

When you give up interfering, and opt instead to stream like water—gently, softly, and unobtrusively— you become forgiveness itself.

Picture yourself as having the same qualities as water. Allow your soft, weak, yielding, fluid self to enter places where you previously were excluded because of your inclination to be solid and hard. Flow softly into the lives of those with whom you feel conflicted: Picture yourself entering their private inner selves, seeing perhaps for the first time what they’re experiencing. Keep this image of yourself as gently coursing water, and watch how your relationships change.

Step 7: Take Responsibility for Your Part

Removing blame means never assigning responsibility to anyone else for what you’re experiencing. It means that you’re willing to say, “I may not understand why I feel this way, why I have this illness, why I’ve been victimized, or why I had this accident, but I’m willing to say without any guilt or resentment that I own it. I live with, and I am responsible for, having it in my life.”

If you take responsibility for having the experience, then at least you have a chance to also take responsibility for removing it or learning from it. If you’re in some small (perhaps unknown) way responsible for that migraine headache or that depressed feeling, then you can go to work to remove it or discover what its message is for you. If, on the other hand, someone or something else is responsible in your mind, then of course you’ll have to wait until they change for you to get better. And that is unlikely to occur. So you go home with nothing and are left with nothing when peace is really on the other side of the coin.

Step 8: Let Go of Resentments

What causes annoyance and anger after a dispute? The generic response would be a laundry list detailing why the other person was wrong and how illogically and unreasonably they behaved, concluding with something like, “I have a right to be upset when my [daughter, mother-in-law, ex-husband, boss, or whomever you’re thinking of] speaks to  me that way!”

But if you’re interested in living a Tao-filled life, it’s imperative that you reverse this kind of thinking. Resentments don’t come from the conduct of the other party in an altercation—no, they survive and thrive because you’re unwilling to end that altercation with an offering of kindness, love, and authentic forgiveness. As Lao-Tzu says:

Someone must risk returning injury with kindness, or hostility will never turn to goodwill. — Lao-Tzu

So when all of the yelling, screaming, and threatening words have been expressed, the time for calm has arrived. Remember that no storm lasts forever, and that hidden within are always seeds of tranquility. There is a time for hostility and a time for peace.

Step 9: Be Kind Instead of Right

There is a Chinese proverb, If you’re going to pursue revenge, you’d better dig two graves, which is saying to me: your resentments will destroy you.

The world is just the way it is. The people who are behaving “badly” in the world are doing what they’re supposed to be doing. You can process it in any way that you choose. If you’re filled with anger about all of those “problems,” you are one more person who contributes to the pollution of anger.  Instead, remember that you have no need to make others wrong or to retaliate when you’ve been wronged.

Imagine if someone says something to you that you find offensive, and rather than opting for resentment, you learn to depersonalize what you’ve just heard and respond with kindness. You are willing to freely send the higher, faster energies of love, peace, joy, forgiveness, and kindness as your response to whatever comes your way. You do this for yourself. You would rather be kind than right.

Step 10: Practice Giving

In the midst of arguments or disagreements, practice giving rather than taking before you exit. Giving involves leaving the ego behind. While it wants to win and show its superiority by being contrary and disrespectful, your Tao nature wants to be at peace and live in harmony. You can reduce your quarreling time to almost zero if you practice this procedure:

Wherever you are, whenever you feel strong emotions stirring in you and you notice yourself  feeling the need to “be right,” silently recite the following words from the Prayer of Saint Francis:

Where there is injury, [let me bring] pardon.

Be a giver of forgiveness as he teaches: Bring love to hate, light to darkness, and pardon to injury. Read these words daily, for they’ll help you overcome your ego’s demands and know the fullness of life.

Step 11: Stop Looking for Occasions to Be Offended

When you live at or below ordinary levels of awareness, you spend a great deal of time and energy finding opportunities to be offended. A news report,  a rude stranger,  someone cursing, a sneeze, a black cloud —just about anything will do if you’re looking for an occasion to be offended. Become a person who refuses to be offended by any one, any thing, or any set of circumstances.

If you have enough faith in your own beliefs, you’ll find that it’s impossible to be offended by the beliefs and conduct of others.

Not being offended is a way of saying, “I have control over how I’m going to feel, and I choose to feel peaceful regardless of what I observe going on. When you feel offended, you’re practicing judgment. You judge someone else to be stupid, insensitive, rude, arrogant, inconsiderate, or foolish, and then you find yourself upset and offended by their conduct. What you may not realize is that when you judge another person, you do not define them. You define yourself as someone who needs to judge others.

Step 12: Don’t Live In the Past – Be Present

When we find it difficult to forgive, often it is because we are not living in the present, and instead, we assign more importance to the past. We assign a good portion of our energy and attention lamenting the good old days that are gone forever as the reason why we can’t be happy and fulfilled today. “Everything has changed,” “No one respects anyone else like they used to…” This is assigning responsibility to the past for why you can’t be happy today.

It’s doubtful that other creatures waste the present moment in thoughts of past and future. A beaver only does beaver, and he does it right in the moment. He doesn’t spend his days  ruminating over the fact that his beaver siblings received more attention, or his father beaver ran off with a younger beaver when he was growing up. He’s always in the now. We can learn much from God’s creatures about enjoying the present moment rather than using it up consumed with anger over the past or worry about the future. Practice living in the moment by appreciating the beauty around you now.

Step 13:  Embrace Your Dark Times

In a universe that’s an intelligent system with a divine creative force supporting it, there simply can be no accidents. As tough as it is to acknowledge, you had to go through what you went through in order to get to where you are today, and the evidence is that you did. Every spiritual advance that you will make in your life will very likely be preceded by some kind of fall or seeming disaster. Those dark times, accidents, tough episodes, break ups, periods of impoverishment, illnesses, abuses, and broken dreams were all in order. They happened, so you can assume they had to and you can’t unhappen them.
Embrace them from that perspective, and then understand them, accept them, honor them, and finally transform them.

Step 14: Refrain from Judgement

When you stop judging and simply become an observer, you will know  inner peace. With that sense of inner peace, you’ll find yourself happier and free of the negative energy of resentment. A bonus is that you’ll find that others are much more attracted to you. A peaceful person attracts peaceful energy.
If I’m to be a being of love living from my highest self, that means that love is all I have inside of me and all that I have to give away. If someone I love chooses to be something other than what my ego would prefer, I must send them the ingredients of my highest self, which is God, and God is love.
My criticism and condemnation of the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of others—regardless of how right and moral my human self convinces me it is—is a step away from God-realization. And it is God-consciousness that allows for my wishes to be fulfilled, as long as they are aligned with my Source of being. I can come up with a long list of reasons why I should be judgmental and condemnatory toward another of God’s children and why, damn it, I am right. Yet if I want to perfect my own world—and I so want to do so—then I must substitute love for these judgments.

Step 15: Send Love

I spent years studying the teachings of Patanjali, and he reminded us several thousand years ago that when we are steadfast—which means that we never slip in our abstention of thoughts of harm directed toward others—then all living creatures cease to feel enmity in our presence.

Now I know that we are all human: you, me, all of us. We do occasionally slip and retreat from our highest self into judgment, criticism, and condemnation, but this is not a rationale for choosing to practice that kind of interaction. I can only tell you that when I finally got it, and I sent only love to another of God’s children whom I had been judging and criticizing, I got the immediate result of inner contentment.
I urge you to send love in place of those judgments and criticisms to others when you feel they impede your joy and happiness, and hold them in that place of love. Notice that if you stay steadfast, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

A Meditation to End on Love

Picture yourself at the termination of a quarrel or major dispute. Rather than reacting with old patterns of residual anger, revenge, and hurt, visualize offering kindness, love, and forgiveness.

Do this right now by sending out these “true virtue” thoughts to any resentments you’re currently carrying. Make this your standard response to any future altercations:

 I end on love, no matter what!

EVERYTHING IS ENERGY!!!! Believe in SELF-HEALING

Nobel Prize winning physicists have proven beyond doubt that the physical world is one large sea of energy that flashes into and out of being in milliseconds, over and over again.

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Nothing is solid.

This is the world of Quantum Physics.

They have proven that thoughts are what put together and hold together this ever-changing energy field into the ‘objects’ that we see.

So why do we see a person instead of a flashing cluster of energy?

Think of a movie reel.

A movie is a collection of about 24 frames a second. Each frame is separated by a gap. However, because of the speed at which one frame replaces another, our eyes get cheated into thinking that we see a continuous and moving picture.

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Think of television.

A TV tube is simply a tube with heaps of electrons hitting the screen in a certain way, creating the illusion of form and motion.

This is what all objects are anyway. You have 5 physical senses (sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste).

Each of these senses has a specific spectrum (for example, a dog hears a different range of sound than you do; a snake sees a different spectrum of light than you do; and so on).

In other words, your set of senses perceives the sea of energy from a certain limited standpoint and makes up an image from that.

It is not complete, nor is it accurate. It is just an interpretation.

All of our interpretations are solely based on the ‘internal map’ of reality that we have, and not the real truth. Our ‘map’ is a result of our personal life’s collective experiences.

Our thoughts are linked to this invisible energy and they determine what the energy forms. Your thoughts literally shift the universe on a particle-by-particle basis to create your physical life.

Look around you.

Everything you see in our physical world started as an idea, an idea that grew as it was shared and expressed, until it grew enough into a physical object through a number of steps.

You literally become what you think about most. CRAZY ISN'T IT? 

Your life becomes what you have imagined and believed in most.

The world is literally your mirror, enabling you to experience in the physical plane what you hold as your truth … until you change it.

EYE OPENING TRUTH: WE LIVE IN A HOLOGRAPHIC UNIVERSE

Quantum physics shows us that the world is not the hard and unchangeable thing it may appear to be. Instead, it is a very fluid place continuously built up using our individual and collective thoughts.

What we think is true is really an illusion, almost like a magic trick.

Fortunately we have begun to uncover the illusion and most importantly, how to change it.

What is your body made of?

Nine systems comprise the human body including Circulatory, Digestive, Endocrine, Muscular, Nervous, Reproductive, Respiratory, Skeletal, and Urinary.

What are those made up of?

Tissues and organs.

What are tissues and organs made of?

Cells.

What are cells made of?

Molecules.

What are molecules made of?

Atoms.

What are atoms made of?

Sub-atomic particles.

What are subatomic particles made of?

Energy!

You and I are pure energy-light in its most beautiful and intelligent configuration. Energy that is constantly changing beneath the surface and you control it all with your powerful mind.

You are one big stellar and powerful Human Being.

If you could see yourself under a powerful electron microscope and conduct other experiments on yourself, you would see that you are made up of a cluster of ever-changing energy in the form of electrons, neutrons, photons and so on.

So is everything else around you. Quantum physics tells us that it is the act of observing an object that causes it to be there where and how we observe it.

An object does not exist independently of its observer! So, as you can see, your observation, your attention to something, and your intention, literally creates that thing.

This is scientific and proven.

Your world is made of spirit, mind and body.

Each of those three, spirit, mind and body, has a function that is unique to it and not shared with the other. What you see with your eyes and experience with your body is the physical world, which we shall call Body. Body is an effect, created by a cause.

This cause is Thought.

Body cannot create. It can only experience and be experienced … that is its unique function.
Thought cannot experience … it can only make up, create and interpret. It needs a world of relativity (the physical world, Body) to experience itself.

Spirit is All That Is, that which gives Life to Thought and Body.

Body has no power to create, although it gives the illusion of power to do so. This illusion is the cause of much frustration. Body is purely an effect and has no power to cause or create.

The key with all of this information is how do you learn to see the universe differently than you do now so that you can manifest everything you truly desire.

 

Thought - THINK ON IT FOR A MINUTE

"When I say thought is everything I mean that literally everything in your life could be a construct of your thoughts. According to Albert Einstein and other brilliant scientists like David Bohm, it seems reality is nothing more than the projection of thought. Everything in life that we perceive with our 5 senses comes firstly from our habitual thinking. The fact that we all see the same things when we are in a group of people means that collectively our thoughts work together. This togetherness of perceiving the same things makes sense since we know the entire universe is made up of energy vibrating at different rates. Everything in the universe is connected on some level even though it might not seem that way.

Although we may view the same scenery or landscape when we are standing in a group, when we walk away from each other we go back into our own seemingly separate little world. Some of us live in the lap of luxury and some of us live in total poverty. Some of us are happy with ourselves and our lives, some of us are dreadfully unhappy and cannot see a way out from the problems that seem to engulf us.

If thought is everything we should able to change virtually every aspect of our life by simply changing our habitual thoughts. Although this is a difficult concept to prove scientifically, you only have to look over your own life and look at the ups and downs you have gone through to see that this concept seems valid. I can only speak for myself but when I look back over my own life I can clearly see how when I am thinking positively and optimistically I have experienced success on so many levels and have felt content during those periods. At times when life has not gone so well, it was my thoughts that let me down, not bad luck or misfortune.

I enjoy reading biographies and almost all biographies are written about successful people, I guess a biography written about someone unsuccessful would not be very successful. There seems to be a common theme with all successful people and that is, they thought about being a success in a certain area of their life long before, perhaps many years before, they became a big success.

One other very fascinating aspect of the lives of many successful people was the fact that in other areas of their life, these super successful people were quite unsuccessful. Perhaps they were successful in their primary field but many suffered failures in their relationships, financially and in other important areas of life. Many of these people claim the same story and that is they never gave much thought to success in other areas of their life other than their primary goal.

If you believe in the concept that thought is everything, you could probably make incredible changes in your life that lead to greater happiness and success. If this concept seems like fiction I guess you just have to leave your life to the winds of fate, but for me I like the idea that my thoughts do control the outcome of my life and I feel I have seen enough evidence over the course of my life to know deep inside that thought is everything". 

Real or Fake Growth Practices?

Not all that claims to be growth is real growth.

Much of what masquerades as growth is a narcissistic pursuit in a shrewd disguise.
What I’ve come to realize is that much of the time, when I think I’ve been growing, I haven’t really been growing. I’ve been trying to fix or improve myself.

The line between authentic growth on the one hand, and fake growth on the other, is an obscured landscape. Sometimes I think that I’m growing, and I really believe wholeheartedly that I am. Then I notice an undercurrent of duplicity, and when I dig deeper, I find that what was perpetrating as an authentic endeavor was really not. I wasn’t starting from a place of wholeness and expanding from there. I was trying to cure an invisible illness: my perceived inadequacy.

That inadequacy is a myth driven by the ego, and has nothing to do with real growth.
We’re already whole. Already complete. You don’t need to prove that to yourself by chasing hollow achievements. Real growth has nothing to do with fixing anything. It’s about expanding what already is. Expanding your knowledge and learning from it. You never stop learning.

The prolificacy of comfort

The other problem I’ve found is that often you think you’re really growing, but you’re just lying to yourself. Some part of you is comfortable. You’ve developed a nice little pattern that cushions you and keeps you safe. So you rebel against the pattern a little, and you take a little bit of risk. This makes you feel good and you tell yourself you’re growing.
But you know that real growth would be much more uncomfortable. It would kill the pattern, and in its place would be an expansion of possibility.

Then there’s the fake growth addict

You know that part of you that wants to always reach the “next level”? That’s the fake growth addict. Real growth isn’t about reaching another level. It’s not about constantly seeking something outside yourself.

Real growth is about internal transformation. It’s about the realization that you are already whole. You are already complete. You are already more powerful than you can dare to imagine!!!!!

Real growth is about embracing that power and doing it fearlessly. The number one sign of fake growth is: constinual seeking.

The hidden secret of real growth: it doesn’t matter that much to itself

The truth about real growth is that real growth doesn’t need validation. It doesn’t need for you to approve or disapprove. It doesn’t need a stamp of validation or a letter of recommendation. It doesn’t need to be sanctioned by a regulated list of socially approved goals. It bogs you down with the need to please people all the time.

And here’s something else… Real growth doesn’t care that YOU call it growth.

It has no ego. It has no internal or external validation system. That’s because real growth is beyond growth.

Real growth is about…

• Experiencing a greater intimacy with life and a deeper passion for it.
• A new level of understanding; moving past a plateau.
• Liberation, not confinement.
• Fluidity, intuition, organicness, naturalness.
• The present moment.
• Starting from a place of wholeness.
• Accepting the reality of the situation as-it-is.
• Healing.
• Not being overly positive (denial) or overly negative (nihilistic).
• Real life, including all the warts, imperfections, blemishes, and scars.
• Accepting the things you don’t like; and upon realizing that you want to change them, facing them head on.
• Not simply swallowing a “think positive” placebo (denial).
• Community. Growth does not happen in a vacuum. It is supported by those around you, and your growth has a positive impact on your immediate circle, your community, and the world.

Real growth accepts that sometimes it’s not necessary

Real growth knows that sometimes it’s time to stop growing. Sometimes it’s time to let go, to move on, and yes, to decline. Growth and decline are two sides of the same pole. Without one, the other can’t exist.  This is the point in my life that matters, because at 45, I am done growing, but always still learning. I have accepted, let go and moved on to a better place than before.

In the end, real growth knows that it doesn’t really matter. It’s not just about rising vertically, or expanding horizontally. Real growth knows that what goes up, must come down, and what expands, must contract.

Giving Up to Enjoy Life More Fully

Sometimes the easiest way to solve a problem is to stop participating in the problem. Sometimes the smartest choice is giving up.

I don’t think that giving up should be your primary method for dealing with problems. But there are certainly a lot of cases where it just seems to be the most intelligent answer.
The more I stop trying to force things to happen, the more they just seem to sort themselves out. The more I let things happen, the less time I spend trying to make them happen.

Giving up is really about honoring your feelings. It’s about giving up trying to force yourself into a mold of societal should and embracing your true self.

If I know anything, it is that anything done by trying means fail. So Quit trying and DO!

So here’s an invitation to…

• Give up trying to be right all the time.
• Give up trying to be cool.
• Give up trying to be tough.
• Give up your golden handcuffs.
• Give up wanting to be a famous musician, artist, architect, thinker, writer, whatever-it-is. Maybe it’s smarter to make your purpose to have an impact, instead.
• Give up wanting to be different for the sake of being unique.
• Give up trying to be perfect.
• Give up keeping relationships that are toxic
• Give up trying to be the center of attention.
• Give up trying to be important (Focusing on community is usually more fulfilling.)
• Give up achieving a lot of ego-driven goals and gains.
• Give up trying to be super-focused. Sometimes the most compelling ideas come from the most messy, unexpected sources.
• Give up caring about owning a lot of cool things, which keep you distracted from acknowledging that you don’t like what you’re doing with your life.
• Give up trying to be someone your Ego wants you to be. The Ego is part of you, but it does not define you.

With that said, there are a lot of ways we think we’re doing good, but we’re really not.
Counter-intuitive to what you think, it might make more sense to…

• Give up trying to be super happy all the time. Instead, settle for being peaceful. It is a calm, medium ground.
• Give up needing a reason to share your love. Being alive is reason enough. In Being, you are radiating Love to everything, and all things.
• Give up trying to be everything to everyone.
• Give up trying to fit the mold of your race, astrological sign, job title, religious group, political party or other erroneous associations.
• Give up caring about being the smartest, best and fastest. At least don’t let your ego get caught up in it.
• Give up caring about “being a man” or “being a woman.” Or doing what is expected of your gender.
• Give up sacrificing your life for an expensive degree that makes you feel important. Experience will lead you.
• Give up caring about having a respectable job, a respectable resume, and a respectable life.
• Give up trying to constantly improve yourself. Sometimes can cause you to lose sight of the present.
• Give up thinking you don’t have the time, money or skills to make your dreams a reality.
• Give up caring about knowing everything in advance before you take action.Put yourself on auto-response instead.
• Give up trying to always find interesting experiences and interesting things to do. Alternatively, be interesting and be interested.
• Give up trying to live up to the expectation of your parents, your friends, your boss, and peers.
• Give up trying to live up to the expectation of… yourself.
• Give up trying to have a flawless body, perfect face, or an impeccable wardrobe. Do take care of your health and well being. Care more about beautifying your mind and being a person who takes beautiful actions.

Trying to make things happen all the time creates a lot of unnecessary anxiety. It’s stressful trying to deny what is.

When I give up, I accept life as it is. No strings attached. No wishing things were different. If an action needs to be taken, I take it. But I’ve given up letting my happiness be dependent on a thing.

Most of these problems only exist within our minds. They’re not real physical problems; they’re simply psychic, imagined obstacles.

It’s interesting how we seem to have so many problems, so many dilemmas. But most of the time the answer to solving them is doing nothing. Giving up!!!!

How to Live Fully in the Present Moment

What does it mean to live fully in the present moment? It means that your awareness is completely centered on the here and now. You are not worrying about the future or thinking about the past. When you live in the present, you are living where life is happening. The past and future are illusions, they don’t exist. As the saying goes “tomorrow never comes”. Tomorrow is only a concept, tomorrow is always waiting to come around the corner, but around that corner are shadows, never to have light shed upon, because time is always now.

“The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.” – Buddha

Why living in the present will change your life.

If you’re not living in the present, you’re living in illusion. That seems to a be a pretty good reason to live in the present, doesn’t it? But how often are we worrying about things that have yet to come, how often do we beat ourselves up for mistakes that we’ve made, no matter how much time has passed? The answer is too much. Not only will living in the present have a dramatic effect on your emotional well-being, but it can also impact your physical health. It’s long been known that the amount of mental stress you carry can have a detrimental impact on your health. If you’re living in the present, you’re living in acceptance. You’re accepting life as it is now, not as how you wish it would have been. When you’re living in acceptance, you realize everything is complete as it is. You can forgive yourself for the mistakes you’ve made, and you can have peace in your heart knowing that everything that should happen will.

“If you worry about what might be, and wonder what might have been, you will ignore what is.” -Unknown

Start living, stop conceptualizing.

The worst part about living in the past or the future is that you’re giving up your personal power. If you’re not living now, you’re giving up your life. You’re surrendering your power to create. If there are changes you’d like to make in life, it’s best to do it now. If you’re living in the past, you can’t do anything about it, it’s gone. If you’re worrying about the future, you’re living somewhere that doesn’t exist. It hasn’t happened yet. If you want to change your life, the only place you can do it is in the present. But first you need to accept life as it is. When it comes down to it your mind is the only thing keeping you from living in the present.

“There is no distance on this earth as far away as yesterday.” ~Robert Nathan

Why is it difficult to live in the present?

There are many people that can give you their opinion or their advice on why it is difficult to live in the present. Some will say it is because we live in abstraction, we live in the world of symbols. Some might say it is because we have awareness of the passage of time, or the illusion of time, it produces anxiety because we can look at the past and predict the future. I think all of these answers are partially true. Though the biggest reason we don’t live in the present is because we don’t shut up. That is, we constantly talk to ourselves. As Alan Watts aptly put it, “if we are talking all of the time, we never hear what anyone else has to say. In the same way, if we are talking to ourselves all the time, we are never listening, we have nothing to think about other than thoughts, and are never in relationship with reality”.

As humans, we love to create stories. We love to listen to other people stories and compare them with our own. This is beautiful. In a way we could say that the entire universe is based on one collection of stories, a cosmic story. The problem is when we feel the need to create a story about everything, we are living entirely in the world of symbols. We confuse the world as it is, with the way we think about it, talk about it and describe it. Reality though, is not a concept. When we realize this we are able to return to a state of peace and stillness.

A new way, 5 ways to start living in the present:

In order for us to live in the present, does this mean we have to give up our innate desire to write our personal story and share it with others? No, we shouldn’t trade one extreme for another. What we really want, is to find balance. If you follow these simple tips you can start living in the present, and start experiencing reality as it is.

1. Don’t try to quiet your mind

The hardest thing to do when living in the moment is, or trying to simply witness life, is to not have the urge to try to quiet your mind. When we try to quiet the mind, we just disturb it all the more. Instead, simply witness your thoughts as if they are pure sound. Don’t try to judge your thoughts, there are no good thoughts or bad thoughts. Simply witness them as if they were noise.

2. You are not your thoughts

Too often we identify ourselves with our thoughts, we actually believe we are the dialogue inside our mind. However, we are much more than just our thoughts, we are the force that moves through our mind, spirit and body. Knowing this helps us overcome our fear of quietness and silence, we can have peace knowing that when our minds are quiet, we are not losing touch with ourselves.

3. Breathe, you’re alive

For a moment I’d like you to stop reading and simply pay attention to your breath. I’ll wait…
As you focus your attention on your breath, you’ll notice that your breath is neither voluntary or involuntary. It is something that you do, but at the same time something that “does you”. When you focus your attention on your breath, you come back into relationship with reality, because like breath, reality is both something you do and something that “does you”. It is co-creative. Practice conscious breathing to bring your mind back to the present.

4. Music for meditation

There is a lot of great music made to assist with meditation.  Binaural beats, isochronic tones, classical selections of Beethoven, Chopin Mozart work well, solo piano (see www.christinebrownpiano.com, my gifted and talented half Sister who is inspired by everyday life to create beautiful solo piano pieces), sounds of nature or any music that gives you a peaceful feeling.  Music made for meditation can help us bring our attention back to the present and clear our mind.

5. Practice mindfulness

This isn’t so much of a tip as it is a staple in living in the present. Practicing mindfulness means we practice our awareness in all our actions. This includes our reactions to situations and others.  Whether we are washing dishes or tying our shoes, our mind is focused on whatever we are doing. We are not thinking about the bills that we have to pay, or the phone call we need to make when we get to the office. We are simply living in the moment.

What You Aren't