Today, we'll be exploring the present moment versus the past or the future, and why connecting to you and becoming more and more present creates space for more peace, wholeness and freedom.
I'll be introducing a couple of different concepts: duality; and talking about timelines as well.
Life is very much lived in aspects of duality, and past and future are one of those dualities. In the same way as happy and sad, love and fear, and various others are dualities within our lives; for one to exist, the other must as well.
However, when we find ourselves in the present moment, we let go of those dualities. We come into a state of oneness; we come into a state of being centred. In this present moment, we allow ourselves the opportunity to create more.
Which might sound a little bit contradictory because how can you create more, or want to create more, without thinking about your future and what it is that you want?
Now, you're absolutely allowed to do that. You're absolutely allowed to step into visioning and imagining what type of future might be possible for you.
Coming back to the present moment, however, allows you to connect in with what is happening with you, your body, your mind, your energy, your spirit right now, and how you are being in your current environment.
The more time we spend regretting things that we have or haven’t done in the past, or worrying about things that may or may not happen in our future, the further away we go and separate from the present moment.
The challenge begins when we are doing this so often – that is, regretting things in the past or worrying about stuff that has happened in the past, or worrying about and pondering on things that may or may not happen in the future – the more our body learns that this is our natural state of being. Our mind and body then continues to reinforce these states of thinking and being and that's what we continue to do.
We are not able to connect to the present moment because we're so used to and so habitualised into this state of worry, regretting the past and worrying about the future. We then become stuck in either side of this duality, or flip flop between them, and this really creates a sense of imbalance in most people.
A lot of clients who I see are worrying about their future or have a lot of regrets around things that did or didn’t happen in the past OR have a lot of energy and trauma and stress in the past that they cannot heal themselves from. They find themselves stuck there far too often and unable to be in the present moment – but the present moment is where we find ourselves in a much higher state of peace and happiness.
The other concept that I’m going to introduce to you is being explored quite a lot in the quantum sciences: the concept of timelines. The idea is that everything is happening right now. There is no past, there is no future. It's simply on a different timeline. Let me try and paint you a picture of this.
Imagine four straight lines. The top line is where you are right now. The one below it is maybe three weeks ago. The one below that is five years in the future. The one below that is two years ago. Those are happening in exactly this moment; they're just happening on a different timeline, or in a different dimension. These are some of the explorations that are being done in science at the moment.
The beauty with this is if we consider energy, if everything is happening right now, everything has the potential to be changed right now. When we can tap into trauma that has happened in what we consciously classify as the past, instead we are simply tapping into a different timeline.
Equally with the premise of the conscious past and present on a linear level (that is, in one line), we can still do exactly the same thing. Quantum entanglement shows us that everything is connected, so when you affect one thing, it will affect another, which is incredibly powerful for us as beings. We have on the one hand created more and more stress and trauma around an event that has happened to us in the past by talking about it again, by remembering the pain of it more and more, by embedding it through this repetition, and we've given it that much more strength, power and weight in our lives.
With the same mechanism, we can heal ourselves from that particular stressful trauma by tuning in to what it would feel like to be at peace, to have no attachment, to be calm, to be whole in that particular event. Tuning into the last experience of this emotional/mental state, using this as an anchor to transform, transmute the whole entangled state.
Within quantum entanglement the initial trauma will also be connected to the last experience that you are tuning into, and so will be impacted and affected and allow for a healing to take place, allow for that energy and frequency to be cleared out of your system, to be replaced with a more balanced state.
I've experienced this working with clients on many occasions as well as with myself where I can tune into a current/recent experience and ask myself the question, what part of me is it that is experiencing anger, experiencing jealousy, experiencing loathing or frustration or stress or fear or anxiety?
What part of me is needing to experience that and in the moment, whatever the emotional state is, doing an energy clearing of that with the awareness and invitation, I am able to clear and create healing of whatever initial trauma that created and manifested that state of being in my body and in my energy fields.
Let's come back to how we can use some of this information to become more and more present, and what benefit that really brings us in terms of our own personal well-being. I'll start with an example to help you to connect with what it is that we're aiming to achieve.
A great way that we can become more and more present is by being completely connected and absorbed by what we're doing. We lose ourselves in the moment.
When we lose ourselves in the moment of an activity – for example, you might be writing a song, you might be painting, you might be taking a walk on the beach, you may be gardening – you are completely feeling into the connection that you have with the plants and what it is that you’re doing with pruning and seeding and picking the fruits of your labour. Being completely absorbed in that particular moment, you've lost yourself into the now. In that moment, you'll often find a sense of peace. All other emotions seem to disappear.
It's often in these moments that we tend to engage our creative brains, our creative thinking, our ability to imagine and vision, and you may remember having epiphanies or light bulbs going off when you were experiencing these states of being lost in the moment.
I, for one, know when I'm having a shower in the morning I can be completely in the moment of enjoying the shower and light bulb after light bulb after light bulb will be going off for things that I've been trying to get my head around.
Of course, one of the most amazing ways to connect with the present moment more and more, is through a daily, or at least regular, meditation practise. Having a regular meditation practise allows you to sit with yourself and continue to bring yourself back into the present moment, noticing and becoming aware of your thoughts. Noticing and becoming aware of emotions or discomfort in your body and still allowing and bringing yourself back to the present moment.
When you find yourself worrying about the future, about things that may or may not happen, and find yourself lost in the past around things that have been regretful, been hurtful, or whatever they've been, use your breath to bring yourself back to the present moment.
Today I'm going to share with you a slightly different tip to help you to connect to the present moment more and more on a day-to-day basis. For me it's always a bit of an experiment. I like to try things out and see how they work and how I feel afterwards. And this is the best way to test new information. When you're learning new things go out and try them and see how they feel in your body. See what your emotional state becomes, what your thinking becomes.
The experience of it is really important to validate whether or not it's true for you and whether it works for you or not.
I'm grateful to live by the beach and get to walk on the beach often and have my feet in the water often. But even when I lived in the city, it was something that I used to do every now and again to really connect in with my body and to the present moment. Whilst walking, I bring my complete attention to my feet and how my feet are landing on the pavement or in the sand, in the water, and how when I'm placing them, particularly in the water, ripples are being created by every step. How slowly I could move to reduce the amount of ripples and effect that I was having on the water. This helps me to get super present.
The other things that I might be thinking if I'm finding myself still getting distracted, feeling into the sensation of the water and the sand on my feet, how it feels when my feet go through the water and touch the sand, the soft wet sand underneath, and then how it feels as I lift my foot and my toes and move the sand to take another place in front of me.
This is not about quietening your thoughts. This is about focusing them on one specific thing that you're doing right now and engaging your thinking into something that you're experiencing right now.
And of course, you'll find your mind wandering to different things, thinking about work, thinking about home, thinking about dinner and lunch, thinking about what happened last week, thinking about a conversation that you had at some point somewhere about someone in some time. And the moment you catch that, you bring your focus and your thoughts back to walking.
In this way, you are constantly training your thoughts to be able to stay in one place. As you start to train your mind back, and to have more and more focus, your meditation practise (if you already have one) will really benefit – and if not, it will make starting one much more rewarding.
Over time you'll likely find with this particular technique, or with using your breath, that you do increase your state of peace, your state of presence in the present, and you're able to just be. Once again, I’m not saying that you're not allowed to think about the future. Of course you are. You're allowed to imagine; you're allowed to visualise what it is that you desire; you're allowed to plan for things that you dream in the future.
Once you've done that, come back to the present moment because this is where life is actually happening. When we spend so much of our time and energy in those two dualities - the past or the future - we stop living.
This is the real power of coming into the present moment: to truly live and to truly play in this wonderful experience of life.
I would absolutely love for you to share how you are going with this technique – share in the comments!
Love, hugs and magic!
Bhavna xx
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