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Life seems to slip past, and the only real control we have is when we seize the moment and focus on the very present. All the pivotal, radical changes we make in our lives come in such times of present-moment lucidity. When we ask that very special someone that very special question, time seems to slow to a complete stop. Before leaping from an airplane, the same. These instants of presence need not be limited to critical points of personal crisis or upheaval: you can consciously seize on the here and now whenever you want. Here are three general methods that I use to shift my consciousness toward my immediate surroundings and center myself in the Now.

1. See the world through another person’s eyes.

A very powerful technique is to imagine that another person is looking out through your eyes. I like to imagine that a prehistoric man is sharing my experience of the world: to his primitive mind, everything around me is totally new and wondrous. This jerks me toward keen present awareness, and makes me appreciate even the tiniest details all around me. A caveman, transported into this twenty-first century landscape, would be utterly absorbed in amazement at his immediate surroundings. He’s so captivated that his mind is completely empty of the kind of mental chatter that normally puts me to figurative sleep: he doesn’t care one whit when the bills are due, when he has to go to work, how much money is in the bank. He couldn’t possibly care less which political party is dominating national debate. As I imagine the caveman peering through my peepers, I can’t help but assimilate his uniquely amazed mindstate. The world is renewed to me, I perceive beauty and beautiful absurdity all around me, and my brain is wiped clean of irrelevant distractions.

Other candidates besides the caveman include: your parents, your inner child, an extraterrestrial, famous historical figures, your hypothetical “perfect self”, God, your personal hero, or your self fifty years from now. Actually, anyone could work.. experiment and see which “headmates” give you the sharpest results.

Incidentally, one application of this technique is to get fresh value out of a favorite book or movie you’ve already read or watched many times. No matter how many times I read my favorite book “The Silmarillion”, when I imagine a friend is reading it through my eyes, every page becomes as new as if I’d never seen it in my life.

2. Pay Attention to every physical sensation

We ignore the vast, overwhelming majority of the data our five senses give us. The taste of one’s teeth, the tactile sensation of a shirt, the sound of one’s own breath. Attempt to let as much of this data in as you can; turn off the filters and stop tuning it out. If you do it right, rather than requiring concentration, it should actually be relaxing: the sensations are always there without any exertion on your part, in fact you normally use a tiny amount of energy to ignore them. WARNING: Following this advice may cause extreme feelings of joy, ecstasy and elation. Avoid where prohibited by law

This total physical awareness technique is actually an upgrade of the classic Buddhist meditation of “resting in the breath”, where the meditator cultivates Attention by sitting and paying attention to the breath, letting idle thoughts come but not giving them any energy. Unlike the meditation, you can use my technique anywhere. When I regularly went dancing at clubs, I actually whipped this technique out on the dance floor to become present in the moment even with extremely loud music and flashy lights and bodies bumping around.

3. Revel in your own mortality

The most difficult of the three techniques, this one involves emotional knowledge of your own death. Of course we all know intellectually that one day we’ll die, but this is just a kind of cold fact which carries little emotional weight, and throughout our everyday lives we totally “forget” it. In order to invoke this method of presence, it’s best that one invests time into meditation on death and impermanence. To go into great details about how to emotionalize your knowledge of death, would take this article too far afield, though I might write about that topic in the future. The more emotional your knowledge of your own death, the more powerful this method.

To invoke the method, force yourself to acknowledge that you might die any second. You could get hit by a jet, a nuclear bomb, or you could have a massive stroke or spontaneously combust. There are infinitely many ways that these could be your last seconds on Earth. The point isn’t to imagine specific bizarre scenarios (you could actually get negative results, just distracting yourself further with daydreams). The point is to activate awareness of your own total mortality. When you emotionally know that these could be your last moments, that knowledge will yank you acutely into presence.

A variation on this method is to invoke the impermanence of everything, not just one’s self. Thus the famous mantra: “This too shall pass”. Look at your surroundings and know that nothing around you is permanent. The building around you will crumble, the nation will be usurped and forgotten, the continent itself will sink or drift away, even the planet itself will eventually cease to be. Like acknowledging your own mortality, it takes practice to put energy into your knowledge of universal impermanence. The more conviction you hold in the finiteness of all existence, the more powerfully you’ll be jolted into The Now.

FURTHER READING

The Power of Now vs. Positive Affirmations
Taking Control of Life
The Pain Body
The Beauty of Decay