Experiencing in the NOW

In an earlier post, I shared that I had found Richard Hittleman’s Guide to Yoga Meditation very supportive.

One of his recommendations is focusing on experiencing what is happening, in the moment.

As he points out, you either can experience something OR you can name it. You cannot do both simultaneously.

The two events – the experiencing and the naming -- happen in such quick succession that typically we believe they are a single event. With my exploration of Non-Duality, I’m coming to learn that experiencing and naming (or labelling, judging, or telling stories) are separate processes.

Naming or labelling causes no discomfort as long as we use it as a tool for functioning in everyday life. The phone is ringing, the traffic light has just turned green, from the sound of the running water I can guess the bath is as full as I need, and so on.

We can generate suffering, though, when we judge situations, when we read meaning into other people’s actions, or when we want things to be different from the way they are.

To get past the labels, the assumptions, the judgements and the stories, Hittleman suggests the following strategy:

As you engage in each of your activities throughout the day, do not resist any experience. Attempt to be aware of the essence of everything you are doing. Even in those everyday chores that you usually accomplish in a mechanical manner and which seem to be very boring, attempt to experience the nature of what you are doing. When you find yourself in what you usually thought of as an unpleasant situation, do not resist it. Throw yourself into the center of the situation. Feel it; experience it.

Each Non-Duality author that I've read has motivated me to do this. I would say, though, that the writings of Jean Klein, "Sailor" Bob Adamson, and especially Richard Hittleman have been the most powerfully inspiring in this regard.

Since I’ve been cultivating this habit, I’ve found it enormously helpful. Tasks that I previously resented –- because they were boring, menial, repetitive, difficult or for some other reason stressful –- have come to be enjoyable. I have been really surprised at how happily I’ve worked through chores that I used to detest.

We especially are prone to suffering when we make comparisons with the past or when we project undesired outcomes into the future. The practice of focusing on experiencing has the added benefit of keeping us in the NOW. If our attention is on experiencing, we can’t help but be living in the present. Problems tend to evaporate when we are in the NOW.

When I'm fully engaged in what I'm doing, my awareness of the "little me" -- what Hittleman calls the "ordinary mind" -- dissolves. I get into a flow, and feel at one with the work and with my environment.