What can be learnt from watching the present moment is probably going to be different for everyone. I don’t believe that anything you hear or read will help understand the real benefits of watching the present moment — you have to experience it for yourself. However, most people that learn to meditate by watching the present moment (like when we concentrated on the breath) start to notice all things are coming and going. Those happy moments, they come, and then before you know it they are gone. Even those sad moments, they come and they go. When I have started to notice this, well all I can say is that there is not so much to be unhappy or concerned about.

Living in the moment means to accept the reality as it is and that is what is very difficult for us. We are able to live the moment, when the moment is wonderful. But the moment often is not wonderful, but difficult and hard, because we feel pain, frustrated, depressed, or just very bad!
We always want to feel good and not bad, so we try to escape that moment by thinking of nice experiences in the past or of nice things that will happen in the future. That unfortunately makes us feel even more bad.

I have experienced during that meditation course that the moment which we consider as very hard is not that hard as we think, we just make it that hard by judging it as hard and as something we do not want to feel. What we need to understand is, that we never feel just happy and good in life, because life changes all the time and we always feel good AND bad. So why making it harder than it needs to be by judging a negative feeling as bad. If we stop judging bad happenings, feelings whatever in life and just accept them as they are, they will loose their power and disappear, they actually stop to be bad because we do not see them as bad anymore. That is the best way to get rid of negativities.

To live in the moment means to accept all negative feelings and experiences, which we consider as negative, and to just observe then as they are. That makes them powerless and they disappear. But if we judge them and try to escape, we push them deep in our unconscious mind and there they will grow even more and get more power.
I really try to learn not to escape the moments with negative feelings anymore but to let them be and observe. I know that this is just at the moment and this moment will change and other feelings will come, so why to make the moment harder than it is?
So if someone want to know more about this Vipassana meditation or wants to make a course, just put the words “Vipassana meditation” to google and you will find better explanations about the meditation and about living in the moment as I am able to describe.

The best thing I can say about it is that this mediation course was the best thing I have ever done in my life and there I got the most powerful tools to deal with all kind of problems in my everyday life!

With best wishes
Miriam

I have also noticed that a lot of the pain is not actually associated with the moment I am in, but with a memory of the past or a unmet expectation of something I wanted to have happen in the future. So I suppose by focusing on the present moment it helps to live the only thing that I actually have, which is right now.

What Miriam says about not judging the moment also makes sense. I sometimes have felt bad, and then I felt bad about feeling bad (i.e. judging the feeling) - and so that made things worse
It is a much different approach to just notice and acknowledge the feeling instead of trying to push it away or hide it.

In my blog entry I also forgot to mention a couple interesting comments posted to one of my previous entries by a Thai Buddhist monk named Yongyut who describes an interesting meditation experience he had.
He has also been kind enough to agree to engage in an interfaith discussion on this blog sometime soon.

I’m just curious if you have any thoughts about that?

Would you say, for instance, that I missing out on anything by looking forward to something in the future? Or missing out on something in the moment from contemplating with gratitude something in the past?
Or do you just consider those feelings something that are also part of the present moment?

I am truly grateful for all of the painful and difficult experiences in my life, without them I’m sure I would not be as close as I believe I am now to the person I was created to be. I believe they have shaped me more than the happy, easy times.

Your point about even being grateful for the difficult experiences I think is so interesting. I’m to the point now where I also feel grateful for them, and wouldn’t trade anything for the things I’ve been learning through them.

I like these two additional thoughts as well.

1. I am visiting my brother in Orlando and they have this on the wall of their home:
“Be content with what you have.
Rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize that there is nothing lacking
the world belongs to you.” - Lao Tzu

2. The second thought came from reading Mormon scripture. There is an experience where Joseph Smith was going through an unusually difficult time. He was unlawfully put in jail for a period of months due to false testimony, the people he loved were being persecuted and violently treated, and it must have seemed like everything he had felt inspired and called to build was falling apart.
In desperation, he pleaded “God where art thou?” — and part of the answer to his prayer was this:
“My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment…
If thou art called to pass through tribulation; if thou art in perils among false brethren; if thou art in perils among robbers; if thou art in perils by land or by sea;
If thou art accused with all manner of false accusations; if thine enemies fall upon thee; if they tear thee from the society of thy father and mother and brethren and sisters; and if with a drawn sword thine enemies tear thee from the bosom of thy wife, and of thine offspring, and thine elder son, although but six years of age, shall cling to thy garments, and shall say, My father, my father, why can’t you stay with us? O, my father, what are the men going to do with you? and if then he shall be thrust from thee by the sword, and thou be dragged to prison, and thine enemies prowl around thee like wolves for the blood of the lamb;
And if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.
The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?
…Thy days are known, and thy years shall not be numbered less; therefore, fear not what man can do, for God shall be with you forever and ever.” (D&C 121:7; 122:5-9)

All the examples in this depiction of bad things that could happen do seem extreme to me (in my context and world) - but I realize that they do happen to some people. The interesting thing about this scripture is that the emphasis is this: regardless of what you pass through - it will really only be a moment, ultimately it will give you more experience that you can value, and in the end it really will be for your own good.
That is also a comforting thought.

And I think I can now see a little more clearly now how that is more than a thought, but how it can be a reality.
If anyone else has any other things to share as well, I’d love to hear them.