Live in the present moment

Imagine you had a bank account that deposited $86,400 each morning. The account carries over no balance from day to day, allows you to keep no cash balance, and every evening cancels whatever part of the amount you had failed to use during the day. What would you do? Draw out every dollar each day!

We all have such a bank. Its name is Time. Every morning, it credits you with 86,400 seconds. Every night it writes off, as lost, whatever time you have failed to use wisely. It carries over no balance from day to day. It allows no overdraft so you can’t borrow against yourself or use more time than you have. Each day, the account starts fresh. Each night, it destroys an unused time. If you fail to use the day’s deposits, it’s your loss and you can’t appeal to get it back.

There is never any borrowing time. You can’t take a loan out on your time or against someone else’s. The time you have is the time you have and that is that. Time management is yours to decide how you spend the time, just as with money you decide how you spend the money. It is never the case of us not having enough time to do things, but the case of whether we want to do them and where they fall in our priorities. Be mindful and live in the present moment

'Ego' My oldest friend vs Mindfulness

​We all believe that when we were born,  we were born without any self ego. Then as we grew up this 'ego' named friend came with us. It would stay with us when we were happy, when we got good grades but we needed it the most in our failures .It would really defend us from all the negativity and criticism. It was one of the oldest and best friend which the world gifted us. 

It would be interesting to know how ego has developed as we grew up. Ego has subconsciously being used by one and  all at times to discipline us and some times to encourage us to overcome our limitations  . "Why are you crying like a girl, boys don't cry"or" "You are now 10 years old you should not behave like a child".Many times our teachers  have told us you you need to do better  than the other class  or batch or this class is the worst class. So we have learnt to live with this ego which helped us to overcome many of our difficulties and challenges as we grew up. We never realized how much we let it rule our lives. 

Mindfulness is being aware of what is happening now. Another way to describe it is to  consciously bring our attention to the present moment. Our friend ego also has a major role to play when we strive to be mindful. 

Let's see how.... Arjuna used to meditate everyday for 30 mins. Yesterday he had a terrible fight with his wife and he was very upset. He got up in the morning  and tried to meditate but he was too disturbed. He had recently gone for MBSR retreat and he decided to be mindful about his negative emotions. But he was finding it extremely hard as he was worried how his wife will react when he comes back home? Whether she will forgive him for coming late and forgetting her birthday.

Throughout the day Arjuna was surprised how hard he was finding it to calm down and focus on his work. He felt whatever he learnt in the last 2 months was not working . He tried to be aware of the raging mind but he was not able to focus his attention. May be he had not learnt it properly. He was extremely disappointed and depressed and this simply added on to his problems.  

 This is one of the situation people come across during  the practice of mindfulness. There are moments we feel that  we are "failing" or unhappy that we are unable to be mindful. This  is being very hard on our self  and  being judgmental about our practice.

The only thing active when we judge ourself specially when we are emotionally disturbed or under stress is the "Ego" which makes us Judgemental about the success or failure of our practice. Everyone who practices mindfulness have had difficulty in getting back the 'rhythm' and it is  quite normal.We all strive to be in rhythm most the times in the day but being out of rhythm is also a part of being mindful 

Mindfulness is about being at ease with all the positive and negative emotions.Accepting that there are many situations and events not in our control and they are bound to create enough turmoil in our mind. This will make our mind  go out of rhythm. It is the nature of the mind to wander and be mindless. 

Say for instance in a fit of rage, We may have said something nasty to a friend. Rather than being angry or upset about why we said those words and failed to be mindful of the  aggression,it is more important to be compassionate to our mind which had to go through this turmoil.Of course the next thing would be to correct what we did wrong. But  if we judge our self,  which is the normal tendency it will make it more difficult for us to realize our mistake and be mindful about the raging emotions in our mind. 

We need to be more compassionate to our self and our mind which has to go through this every day.Mindfulness without self-compassion is incomplete.This  will make it easier for us to get our focus back and be mindful with our dear friend "Ego".