The Global Conversation

Tag: Now

  • WARNING: Easily Distracted

    This summer, my main “spiritual project” has been to fully be the now moment at any given moment. Sounds like an easy task. But in reality, this was much, much harder than anticipated. After delving into some serious self-reflection, I realized that my blockage of the now moment came not from getting into the present moment, but rather staying within it. Why was it so hard to stay in the now moment? Too many distractions.

    It seems as though there are a million different things that tempt us and sway us away from the now moment. In earlier times, our minds themselves were pretty effective at keeping us thinking somewhere else. But in the 21st century, we’ve even expanded our range of distractions to al list that can easily fill the rest of this week’s post. Movies, Music, TV, Internet, Social Media…all conveniently located at the tips of our fingers to distract us even quicker, even more efficiently. With every hit new song to the top viewed channel on YouTube, every little thing is constantly fighting for our focus. By giving up our highest intention to pay the lowest attention to some lackluster entertainment, we distract ourselves from the most important thing there is: now.  

    To fully understand what’s occurring in our minds, we find ourselves asking some very interesting questions, with some equally interesting responses. So, we ask and respond: why do we continuously choose to occupy our mind with distractions instead of living in the glorious and infinite present moment?

    Boredom. We are taught to fear the blank spaces in our lives. Whether it be of time or of silence, peaceful nothingness has virtually become shunned in our society. More and more in this day and age, we seem to have a ‘default’ noisy mental state. We fill up every corner of our mind with something, just so we are not confronted with that uncomfortable feeling of pure oblivion. When we begin to feel that nothingness, we look for anything to fill that space, even if it isn’t real. We play movies in our minds, with the film reeling the stories of our past, or the dreams of our future. For better or for worse, we take this time to pass judgment and make expectation, either about the newest post on Facebook to the upcoming channel on Youtube. By constantly fixating on the images of yesterday and tomorrow, we find that we really don’t have time for anything else. And so, our minds have adapted to never being nothing.

    Now, the question remains: why are we so afraid of nothingness?

    In a nutshell, we are afraid of being mindless. As seen across the ages, we value our thought power so much we forget (or ignore) how misleading our thoughts can be. We are so attached to our thoughts that we often don’t even realize just how meaningless 99% of our thoughts are. In our unparalleled attachment to our minds, we far too often let our minds define Who We Are and What We Wish To Be. All too frequently, this leads to a false image of the self being created – one that is entirely based on your past physical history. Further, if your mind is unhappy with the false self it has created, then it will hope that in the future something happens that changes that definition. The ego in the mind craves every little detail (past or future) to remind itself of Who It Is – at the expense of your attention AND awareness.

    Unfortunately, for the ego-bound mind, it cannot define itself Now. If all that exists is the present moment, then the ego itself has no basis of comparison to make its judgments or expectations. Without giving our minds the time to be subject to the ego’s whims, we have the space to experience ourselves in our truest form. Because, What could possibly be more important than Now?  

    The element of distraction certainly has seemed pretty elemental to our society – but it doesn’t have to be. By choosing to be mind-less, a deeper and higher voice can be heard. Just watch your thoughts for ONE DAY, and you will begin to understand what they are. Begin to see through the distractions, of past and future, and unwrap for yourself the greatest gift of all. The present.

    (Lauren is a Feature Editor of The Global Conversation. She lives in Wood Dale, IL, and can be reached at Lauren@TheGlobalConversation.com)

  • Being Beyond Bullying: Series Part 2

    Part 2:  The Best Gift Ever

    As bullying continues to affect teens across the nation, we are beginning to see that the consequences are becoming more and more magnified. In coordination with National Bullying Prevention Month, the National Educational Association released some very disturbing figures: over 160,000 teens stay home from school in fear of being bullied in the classroom. And that’s just in one day. Given that some teens may repeatedly skip school to avoid bullying, a little math goes a long way in helping us look at the even bigger picture of this statistic. With an average of 180 school days in a year, there are about 28.8 million days of school missed in a single school year, solely because of the fear of bullying. So much time, so little progress.

    As this happens, not just once in a while, but on a daily basis, we are left wondering about this fear we teens seem to have. We start to see that bullying is not just a one-time event, but rather is an incident that seems to linger and create extended periods of stress and anxiety. We are left with the questions, Why is our fear of being bullied become so strong? Why are we so afraid of a possibility, and have gone to such a level that we change our daily lives to avoid that scenario? To even begin a conversation on these questions, we need to travel back to the original event: the act of bullying itself.

    When we experience an act of bullying, we realize that the amount of time that we were actually being bullied was very, very short. As it takes less than 30 seconds to physically or verbally push a teen’s self-esteem into the ground, the bullying event itself is a very temporary matter that is quickly replaced with a thousand other scenarios, actions, and experiences. It seems as though, when we are bullied, we should just be able to move above and away from the event. But somehow, the bullying event sinks into our minds, and then becomes the center of our psychological attention.

    We engross ourselves with our pain of the experience, and so we dwell in the traumas that could have been released. We envelop ourselves in the What If situation, and so we begin to fear the possibilities that could have set us free. We focus our minds, on the past and on the future, to continue experiencing the bullying long after the deed has been done, and thereby keeping it alive. By spending time worrying and suffering, fretting and brooding, we lose the minutes and moments of life and love in between.

    But this can change, and it will be changed by The Best Gift Ever: the Present. This isn’t a gift that is received on a birthday or holiday, but it is the only moment that ever truly exists: Now. By living in the now moment, the present moment, we let go of events and thoughts that are past experiences, because they are in the past. When we live in the moment, the fear of “what if” also disappears, as it is not happening now, and may not even happen in the future. As bullying serves to drive teens away from the present by filling their self-esteem with thoughts of past woes and future worries, the present is simply what is happening now. And now. And now. And the best part, is that we always have this gift, the gift that keeps on giving every moment of the day. By being present, we are truly beyond the mind games bullying wants to play.

    (Lauren is a Feature Editor of The Global Conversation. She lives in Wood Dale, IL, and can be reached at Lauren@TheGlobalConversation.com.)