Living in the present moment

This blog is authored by Gayan Weerasinghe
When we talk about mental and physical wellbeing, we often complain about the external environments such as our partners, parents, jobs, bosses and so on. But in most of cases, we have less chance of changing our outer environments.
The overall wellbeing of life has nothing to do with your external environments. The fulfillment of life and the external circumstances have a very less correlation. The fulfillment of life is determined by the responses we make towards those circumstances rather than the circumstances itself. As an example, just imagine, you are stuck in somewhere and you are very upset with it. Check your inner chatter in this situation. It can be “who has done this to me? This is ridiculous, I want to teach a lesson to the person who has done this. I am so unlucky. Always bad happens to me….”  Instead you can focus on the present moment and see what you can do for it. Facilitating more inner chatter does not help you to overcome the challenges and it increases your stress level and affects mental conditions in a negative way.
I know, some of us have this constant query about life such as who am I? why am I here? what is my purpose? Are we our thoughts which are going on and on in our minds? It is miraculous to understand that we are not our thoughts. Our thoughts are arising from the conditioning we have from our childhood, our cultures, social interactions, and past experiences. Hence, the explanation which is given by our thought process to any situation can not be given a true image of the present situation. Our thoughts process which derives from our ego (the ego which I mean here is the concept of “I “, “Me”, “Myself”) is the main root cause of all our problems. The thoughts based on egoic mind often triggers suffering, arrogance, over confidence, negative competitive status, and unhappiness. Deriving conclusions from ego and thoughts is a great limitation we have in our lives.
In this relation, there are so many buzz words such as Mindfulness, Self-awareness, Emotional intelligence, Neuro linguistic programming, meditation, spirituality and so one which have been discussed at large due to this chaotic human life patterns. When I read about these concepts, I happen to think that the intended process of all these concepts have a very strong connection to the living in the present moment without your ego and thought process.
Living in the present moment is that state of active, open, and intentional attention on the present. The way of living in the present moment is to realize that you are not your thoughts and you become an observe of your thoughts from moment to moment without judging them and without giving any definitions. It gives you the power of the present moment to see the world very objectively. This is not about controlling thoughts.  Pureness is not coming out of controlling thoughts. The more you try to control the thoughts process, the mind will cheat you in different ways more and more. Sometimes it can rebel and generate more and more thoughts or sometimes it can go into a temporary silent state until next trigger comes. Surrender to the present moment and live abundantly in the moment gives you a magical shift which leads to happiness, success, and fulfilment.