Actually showing up, not thinking about it.

The thing is, you have to actually turn your attention to what’s happening now. You can’t just say magic words like “be here now” and abracadabra. So, that requires practice: breathe, check in with the body, find where the mind is… allow thoughts to drop (compassionately!), then rest in now, in its detail – not just as “now” or “the moment” or even some remembrance of what it’s supposed to feel like. Then relax… and here you are.

*

Thought is great. But it tends to:
- Deny the present by being about the past or the future (or abstract concepts)
- Inevitably carry desire or aversion, thus making one dissatisfied with What Is.
- Decrease relaxation, speed us up;

Thought is like a whirlpool, making it harder to just be (not do), here (not there), now (not then).

*

I employ vipassana to check in with greater detail so I can see what might be hindering my mindfulness.

At the very least, vipassana techniques are a necessary condition for being in “the moment.”

[Note added Dec. 31: Typing in these notes is like drinking nectar from the source! I am loving this moment in a way that, over a week of text learning, I had not been able.]