What % Of The Time Are You Present?

[philosogi]

And what brings you back to presence? What draws out your mind, clouding presence?

(yes time is an illusion, but humour me plsthx)

[Sage_Elias]

I get back to presence whenever I meditate or on the toilet or in nature.

What clouds my presence? Watching  youtube videos clouds my presence the most.

 

[Shin]

As soon as you realize that you never loose presence, then you can't loose it anymore.

You might think you loose presence when you think, but that's just an illusion.
The thoughts has just taken all your attention, but presence has never been lost, you just lost awareness of it for a moment (and thoughts are presence btw).

When you ejaculate, do you loose the parts of the body you're not focused on ? No.
When you put blindfolders on your eyes, do you become blind ? No.
When the nurse sting you, do you loose the other arm ? No.

You never loose anything, you can't, it's impossible.
 

Some easy tricks to get back to full consciousness are:

Focus on your breath

Focus on your body sensations

Focus on a mantra you learned (like "I am" or "Stay awake")

There is a line that you can cross, if you pass it, everything will make you conscious instead of inconscious.
Even watching a movie or having sex, playing games or listening to music, reading, or talking

Nothing will shake your sense of presence anymore, it will be your natural state of being

@Max_V Yes.

Edited May 1, 2017 by Shin

[Max_V]

@Shin How do you cross this line? Just keep practising to bring consciousness into your life?

[Arkandeus]

get in the habit of asking yourself ''am I aware?''  and answer that for yourself

then observe what happens, it is very interesting.

you can be playful with it and ask it at random times

 

then you can be

[philosogi]

On 5/1/2017 at 4:24 AM, Shin said:

There is a line that you can cross, if you pass it, everything will make you conscious instead of inconscious.
Even watching a movie or having sex, playing games or listening to music, reading, or talking

Even Facebook?  

[Shin]

2 minutes ago, philosogi said:

Even Facebook?  

There is a limit to everything :3

[SOUL]

I'm present 100% of the time..... now, how much of that am I aware of being present?

Hmmmmm.... increasing amounts.

Edited May 13, 2017 by SOUL

[electroBeam]

70% of the time.

Things that bring me back to the present:

my buddha wallpaper on my phone

my buddha wallpaper on my laptop

my alarm that goes off every hour with the text "be present now!"

quotes from adyshanti, sadghuru, mooji etc on my facebook newsfeed

[Jani]

Well, anything really that takes one's attention away from presence. Things that make me stop and look within are when I get negative about something, and when I act irrationally on the emotional level. This work really anchors your way of thinking so when you're about to get out of the water so to speak, it stops you just before the surface. And of course meditation  

[Ramu]

I find myself present when I wake up in the morning.  Lately I've been doing a sort of walking inquiry. When at work or when walking somewhere, I will self inquire, but only during random moments of time when I don't need to focus on anything in particular.  Most of my day is spent shifting between Atman and Brahman.  However, it has always been Brahman.  I would say 25% of my day I'm fully present.  That jumps up a bit on the weekends when I have more time to myself.  I just started a new career, so I've been distracted.  Despite all this, I am Brahman.

[eputkonen]

On 4/30/2017 at 9:00 PM, philosogi said:

And what brings you back to presence? What draws out your mind, clouding presence?

 

Most of the time.  For me, it is the natural state.  Presence is the norm.  If don't find myself out of presence often. 

If I notice some sort of not enjoying what is, suffering, or not accepting what is...then that very noticing brings me to presence again.

I get pulled out of presence most due to deep rooted conditioning that I am still not aware of.  So when something like the above happens...I take a moment to delve into it and ask myself "what is causing this...what is the root?"  And often, I see the root.  Then it is a matter of questioning that understanding (belief, assumption, etc.)...because it is flawed or incorrect.  When the issue is seen through, the understanding changes...and then the same situation in the future will not pull me out of presence.  Then I continue on (in the day) in presence.

Edited May 13, 2017 by eputkonen

[FirstglimpseOMG]

It is such a sliding scale for me. It took me mountains of videos and lectures and books and intense curiosity and interest to discover and then begin to understand and adopt a mindfulness practice. I'm one lazy, undisciplined, impulsive mofo (not all extreme or radical, but in a mickey-mouse, lame way), or at least I was. I'm improving exponentially after learning about a mindful way of being, and realizing that I wanted the results and that I was good at it pretty naturally and quickly (we all can be). It probably took me ramping up the mindfulness more and more over a period of 5 or 6 months, and before I knew it, I honestly became surprised if I went any more than 5 to 10 minutes without being present and aware of the voice in my head being a useless, antagonistic, victimy, usually wrong, angry goof about the smallest, stupidest shit, or watching my thought process and recognizing the phenomenon of me thinking of a story in my life and then instantly and sub-consciously creating the emotional reaction to it. Mindfulness takes naturally with a little work and vigilance, and the positive-feedback of scaling results and exponential improvement.

 Be patient and keep at the mindfulness during your regular day, day after day, the brain re-routes and grows new neural pathways by the SECOND as you do this! You get a bit better at it, putting in effort that gets more and more effortless, and in no time at all your brain is adapting constantly to help and be a more unconscious part of contributing to mindfulness. Your Divine, beautiful, unfathomable biology does it's own upgrading naturally as you enjoy and refine your awareness and strive to sink into ever-widening circles of consciousness and to egress away from ego to sit more and more often behind it, as the silent witness.

Don't be be put off by the cycles of straying from mindfulness. Even as I got better and better at the whole game over a period of months, often when a frustrating, high- anxiety situation or challenging day presented itself, I could easily lapse into worry and angst for an hour or two, or piss away most of a day balled-up and annoyed about a situation that was out of my control or I knew better than to expect a different result from. I'd sort of be aware that I was reacting foolishly and pretty uselessly as I slipped, and still sort of watched myself sink into reaction, watched my common sense and proactive solutions flash and be sort of mindfully ignored as I regressed into egoic, lower consciousness. Then my pretty decently progressing mind and newer higher-consiousness tendencies would kick in and I'd be like; "For cryin' out loud, I know better, or should by now, how much of a perfectly awesome day I have pissed away by succumbing to ego and baseline emotional creation and reaction, sheesh - enough!"  When this happens I need to just go to all I've learned and am coming to understand and embody about non-duality, spirituality, and remember that my true essence is eternal light and love, and that every second, second by second, ONLY the eternal NOW exists, and one second behind or one second ahead does not, and will not ever exist, so umm, maybe happy up and quit clinging to results or past stories, quit forgetting that I am not a bag of skin born into this world, but a wave of expression and a miraculous modulation of Universal consciousness that is of  this world, co-creating it with billions and billions more points of light and view. (I am, however, the undisputed King of the Run-on Sentence, according to my all-important Ego!)  Oops..

 Getting pissed off about money, or lack, or perceived slights, or my apparently (illusively) limited, slow-growing human-ness, or the state of the house, town, country, world, or that damn gravity plotting to spill my cup of coffee on the floor when I don't watch my clumsy elbow?? ...well - you get the picture.

Don't sweat the sometimes uneven, cyclic, initial path to mindfulness; it only takes a little persistence to build that exponential momentum to more and more awareness and presence. It gets harder and harder to slip and slide away from mindfulness without more and more often becoming - wait for it.. - more mindful each time you slip. Better and better, more and more easy and natural with persistence, and honestly, before you know it, the mindfulness becomes the habit, more the norm and not something to work towards constantly. Soon it gets pretty impossible NOT to be mindful. I've been working on it all too, and trust me, there's less and less going back from mindfulness, you just get to a point in good time, that there's no going back from - it is awesome. And the quality of life and diminishment of needless conjecture, worry about the future, sense of lack in a first-world country, worryful fantasizing about future problems, annoyance at the sinkful of dishes, any kind of 'woe is me' victim mentality, teeth-grinding about lack of customer service or rampant corporate grift, the asshole neighbour... deep sigh... holy shit! - I'm ecstatic to be alive, present, healthy and vital, imaginative and full of capacity, endlessly inventive, flexible and adaptive, expansive and spiritually growing.. woohooo... lighter and lighter and lighter, I'm all awesome natural love and intelligence and glowing, growing kindness and positive strength, I'm life itself, ready to create, ready to be tapped, living to LIVE, taking it all in, fascinated and invigorated and inspired and just shining more and more...  FUCK I LOVE LIFE, ALL OF IT, I AM... I AM... I AMMMMM! Now I love people and gravity and messes and rainy, overcast chilly days and my sinkful of dishes... but they can wait, beautifully, in my sink, while I laugh at contrived anxiety and rush off to create something, or love and appreciate and en-JOY the day, or something or someone. 

Ok, now I'm just doing the joyful rambling thing. Mindfulness is awesome practice (not even work after a very short time really), for bringing and keeping awareness more and more fully within the present moment. Eckhart Tolle, Mooji, Rupert Spira, Gary Weber & Rich Doyle, Shinzen Young, Leo Gura, and many many more teachers, sages and gurus are available at your fingertips to instruct, inform, enhance and guide you.

Oh, and to answer the posted question, I'd honestly guess that my average level of mindful existence is likely.. shit, I guess maybe 55 to 65% mindful. Maybe 65  to 75% or so if I keep referring to inspiring literature or media. It gets better and better, easier and easier, despite backsliding.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ = Less Suffering! Enjoy! 

Edited May 14, 2017 by FirstglimpseOMG
typing on a tablet just sucks

[SLICKHAWK]

For me Shin says it best. 

I focus on my breathing every hour i wake every minute even if it seems weird to others.

Be patient. Take a moment remember time is nothing to infinite light/love.

We are Amazing beyond this, our secret is light/  love knowledge. True awaken to higher self.

Now breathe forget what is done and continue in always present moment.

[FirstglimpseOMG]

Yeah buddy! This exact and eternal present moment is the sweetest life of life.

It simply is all you have. 

The eternal present moment... "It's the only power you have." - Amoda Maa Jeevan

[Visitor]

To perceive now has already passed because it always takes time to perceive.

But generally, whenever I am active in doing something unfamiliar or risky.

[FirstglimpseOMG]

13 hours ago, Visitor said:

To perceive now has already passed because it always takes time to perceive.

But generally, whenever I am active in doing something unfamiliar or risky.

Interesting. Hard to get around the time-delay effect of our biological information-relay system.. but what if we skew our perspective or widen it and shift the context a little? Are we not truly present fairly easily just by maintaining or prolonging any current run on awareness of our present moments, moment by moment, as consistently and as often as possible? Hmmm, I'm pondering as I write, and my gut says that (as we become more and more awakened) we manage (or realize?) more of an actual reality as presence than a 'pseudo-presence' that's retarded or offset in any manner by biological limits or time constraints. And actually, how excited are we going to get about labels and symbols? What's stopping us from embodying our essential nature as being outside of time and not coached or limited by such constructs? Sure, practical clock-time as a tool so I can pay my rent on the first and meet you at two for lunch, but... let's strive to just recognize our self-limiting concepts and delusions for what they are and work towards transcending all that. 

[Visitor]

@FirstglimpseOMG There is a state of mind which I enjoy most of the time when I am cycling in race tempo mode. It is commonly called 'in the zone'. It is an awareness of every part of the body, its functioning on the bike, the bike itself, the surrounding environment, plus an intuition of what is about to happen next. It is an awareness which puts me into 100% efficiency, fearless, and doubtless. 

[Dodo]

57.41%

[Dodo]

But ofcourse all that matters is wherher I am present now.

To be present now, we need to accept even the unacceptable. 

Can you accept the unacceptable and be perfectly content where you are with what you're doing? Even while reading this... Or typing a reply!

Or better yet, while doing nothing.

Edited May 15, 2017 by Who_Am_I