Practices for Being Present

29 Aug by Sarah Susanka

How is being present the key to living a fuller life?

It may seem a radical notion, but in fact life doesn’t exist anywhere but in the moment. It’s awfully simple, and we hear it said so often these days that we miss its meaning. But there is actually no other place than now.

People will say, “But I can remember my past.” And I say, “Where is that memory?” That memory is happening here, now. The person it happened to is only here in the memory. When it happened, it happened in a previous moment, but right now the only thing happening is a memory of that moment, and that is Now!

How is this related to our understanding of time?

There’s a way in which we tend to think of time as this long horizontal line along which there’s a past, a now, and a future. But if we take that line and turn it vertically, the past and future are only here, embedded in this now. Our notion of a past and our notion of a future can only be experienced in this moment.

So if you say, “I’ll do it tomorrow,” you’re putting off something that can actually only happen now. It could be the now that’s occurring tomorrow, but when it happens, it is now, this moment. It’s a tautology. We can’t say the truth of it because it’s beyond our physical capacities to truly understand when we’re not present. When we are present, it makes all the sense in the world because we’re here! We’re now! There’s no separation between the moment and who we are.

What does it feel like to be present?

Almost everyone I’ve ever met thinks they’re present, even though for many, they’re not. They are here in a body, but they’re identified with that body and all its thoughts, feelings and experiences, and they are running on automatic, based on old programming, along with a whole bunch of projections and fears that are running in the background.

Presence isn’t about all of that stuff. It’s what informs the human form and all those things that you call you. But when you look for it, you can’t find it because it’s not a thing.

So, what if it’s not true that you’re present? What if you’ve been missing something so much more mind blowing than you’ve ever imagined? Just what if? Allow yourself to explore the possibility. When we claim, “I’m present now,” we’re missing it’s happening right there while we’re claiming it. There is more—there’s always more. So if you open to that possibility, that there’s more to it, when you actually experience it, it will knock your socks off—your socks and everything else!

So how can we practice being present?

My husband and I run a small school called Humans in Training Institute. We don’t have any web presence, so you won’t find us that way. We work with a small group of about 30 students and our emphasis is on inquiry into our true nature, the mystery of being human, and what the experiencing of our lives has to teach us. We’re not looking for answers, we’re looking for better questions, because when you stay with the questions, everything opens. It’s like a flower. If you ask another question, more can come. But when you lock it down with an answer, it shuts the door on the possibility of that moreness.

Rilke says, “Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” This is where curiosity comes in.

One exercise that we’ve been focusing on recently, and that I love to do before bed is to look back over the day and ask myself, “If this day were the answer to a question, what would the question be?” This question will turn your world inside out! It’s so powerful because it asks us to look with different eyes at what happens to us. It’s really asking us to consider the possibility that everything we experience is happening for us, not only to us, to help us learn more about ourselves. That’s the kind of question that opens us. I find there’s a theme to each day, which I was completely oblivious to until I asked that question. I find I could write a book about every day—though I’m trying to keep myself to just five minutes, as I record what I’m discovering each day.

What’s another practice we might try?

Another practice that’s fun and creative is to watch all the different versions of “me” that come out of your mouth on any particular day. As you become an observer of your life, you’ll start to notice there are many different “me’s.” There is a me that is argumentative. There’s a me that’s a sentimentalist. There’s a me that’s trying to achieve and get acknowledged and recognized. There’s a me that wants to eat chocolate cake all day. We think of ourselves as one thing, but we actually have all these different characters speaking through one mouth all the time. We like to think of ourselves as consistent, but this exercise will prove to you beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are anything but!

My husband often tells his students that it’s really no surprise that people have a hard time getting along. Just consider, when two people get together, it’s no wonder there are arguments, because there are 16 “me’s” on one side of the bed and there are 16 “me’s” on the other side of the bed, and they all have different opinions! Needless to say, it doesn’t often work very well.

This exercise is helpful to see the relativity of “you.” You’re not who you think you are. You are many different characters, and you’ve got some favorites. You could diagram this by putting the letter ‘I’ in the middle of a piece of paper and drawing lines out from that I to each of the names you’ve given to your various “me’s.” There’s the worthless me and the I’ve-got-to-save-the-world me. And on and on. Just start to notice. This inner work helps us see through these myriad characters that collectively form your personality, to the truth of who we really are: simple awareness, with no position about anything.

Note: This article was adapted from a 2018 interview with writer and editor Jenn Brown. 

You can learn more about being present at the Introductory Not So Big Life Workshop. See below for details and more information.