Living In the Moment

Transcript

Jim: 0:01

Hello and welcome to this episode of Decide on Joy, a podcast coming to you from Harmony Spiritual Center in Fort Worth, Texas. My name is Jim Kovalt.

Pjae: 0:14

My name is Rev. Dr. P. J. Stanley and welcome.

Jim: 0:18

This podcast talks about some basic elements of New Thought Spirituality and how they work in, in, in daily life. And this week we're talking about the importance of living in the moment. That's certainly not unique to, to new thought. It is not. That's, you find that in a lot of varieties of spirituality or just psychology for that matter, but yeah. Just be here now.

Pjae: 0:43

Yeah.

Jim: 0:43

Yes. And so basically that, that's pretty evident what that means, but Tell us more.

Pjae: 0:52

Yeah Just tell a little story because the reason I was telling you of sharing with you earlier The reason this came up was because I was somewhere just doing I can't even remember what exactly it was I just remember that I was just having a great time and when I got home and I was like, oh my gosh I didn't take any pictures of that Why, why do you, and I never remember to take pictures of just wonderful things that are going on, people that I'm with and, and all of that. And I just thought, no,'cause you're in the moment. You don't break from the moment to take a picture. And I just thought, oh, that's, that is what it is. And so, so why is that important? It's important for me, but I think it's important for life. And so that's why I wanted to talk about what it looks like to, we, we, we, Ram Doss wrote a book called Be Here Now years ago. And. There's the same thing as living in the moment, be here now. So many times, you are standing there, talking with someone, or being with someone, and they are someplace else. And you know that they are. You know, their mind isn't with you, they're not with you, and they're talking, and they're doing something else. And so, that whole moment, that whole time that you're sharing, is wasted. It, to me, it's a wasted moment because they're not with you and that's, I don't think that's how life is. I mean, if you don't want to be with someone in terms of that moment or whatever, then do something else. Read a book or do something else. I think it's very, I want to say disrespectful, but I think it's even disrespecting yourself in terms of the, you're wasting your, your, your time and your life by spending time with someone. If you don't want to be here now, then, then why are you here?

Jim: 2:23

Yeah. Sometimes they might not even be aware that that's what they're doing. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Yes, their mind has gone off on some other track, but they may not particularly be aware of that. They may not. I mean, you have to stop and think, wait a minute. Yeah. Well, hang on. I've wandered

Pjae: 2:42

off. I don't even know what this person just said. You have to

Jim: 2:44

remind yourself to be here now. But you know, that, that first thing you were talking about, the thing with the constantly taking pictures and videos and whatever, it's, it seems like now for a lot of people, it's If they don't have a picture of it, if they don't have a video of it, it didn't happen. It's not real. And, and it The reverse kind of

Pjae: 3:05

validates their life that they take pictures of it. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Jim: 3:09

And so they're in the midst of whatever that moment is. You're concerned about the presentation of it, you know?

Pjae: 3:18

Yes, yes. What's it gonna, what does it look like? Does it look like I'm having a good life as opposed to actually having a good life?

Jim: 3:24

Yeah. You know. I mean, some of that, I certainly, I get it, but.

Pjae: 3:30

Absolutely. And as I was sharing with you and I also, I wanted to say this on, on on the podcast. You know, if you're having a, a wonderful time and someone else says, Hey, let me get a picture of that. You're still in the moment. You haven't broken to, to take a picture. Someone's saying, let me get a picture that either may or may not be in your group, but that's okay. I'm talking about individually you, you, whatever, whoever you may be. Looking at your life and living it and, and, and what's going to happen. And I'm speaking about this from an older perspective. It's not going to be too long where I will be sitting on the rock on the porch and a rocking chair, and all I will have are my memories. And we will all get to a place, hopefully live long enough that what we have will be our memories. And you're going to have holes in your memories because you weren't in the moment. The reason, the memories come because of you being there, being actually in that moment. When you have a, you're going to have memory loss. Like, Oh, I don't, I remember we went there, but I don't remember what happened there. Yeah. Because you weren't in it. So this is for me, part of wanting to make sure that I'm living this life. And I. Not only am I in the moment, but I'm in the moment with people I want to be with so that speaks to another thing Which we'll be talking about in another episode when I want to talk about who am I that's a question I'm gonna be asking I'm in another episode, but that it's just to me With very little time. We don't know how much time we have and I don't want to be dreary But I'm just we really don't know so whatever time I have I want to spend it with the people that I care about And I'm not mean just being in love or or family. Let's just try there's friends. There's there's Things I decided to do and to go and to be in a class or to learn something and I decided to do that, so I want to be in that moment and then I'll have better memories, clearer memories of how wonderful that was or whatever it was I was doing. So that's one of the things I'm speaking to as well about the importance of being here now.

Jim: 5:27

Yeah, I mean, I don't I don't think it's always taking you out of the moment if you take a picture of something I mean that sort of picture but say you see and an Interesting bird or something. Oh, certainly. Yeah. Well, that is the moment. Yeah,

Pjae: 5:40

but that is the moment you're you're seeing a bird You think oh my god, that's a beautiful thing and you want to capture it. That's the moment I'm just saying stepping outside of what you were doing something that's happening Because oh, let's I need just I need to capture this if that's If that's what you're thinking, then you're not with the moment. You're not with the people, the person, the place, or the moment. Yeah, that's all. And so yeah.

Jim: 6:05

And, so how can we remind ourselves to to stay in the moment? That is the

Pjae: 6:14

trick, isn't it? And I think it's, it's, it's first of all, I'm gonna go back to talking about what Be Here Now, which is what Ram Dass was talking about. Be Here Now means to stop missing out. On your life by only living in our heads where that's one of the things and so I'm talking about stepping out of it when you're deciding to stop being physically present mentally present to take a picture and capture to show Someone else what a good time you're having and you're missing out on the actual time That's one way the other way of being here now is by not living in your head and we do that a lot We have one of the things I know for sure is that we are Right Infinitely creative, so creative. So in our heads, we've got a lot of things going on that isn't actually going on outside of our heads. So in other words, you can see something going on with someone, you see it, and then you make up stories about it. And so that's, so that's not also, also not being there. Now we're creating great stories, but that's not our life. That story we created is not actually our life. Our life is being in the moment what's happening now and how we're responding. So, what it means, to answer your question, to live fully, we have to connect with the moment. The immediacy, the immediacy of being alive, the immediacy of being present right now, of actually living, and spiritual practices are what help us experience the present moment. Spiritual practices. And so, let me start. Talk a little bit about what I mean when I say spirituality because I'm not talking about religion. Religion is one thing Spirituality is another. You can be completely spiritually present and and not belong to any any religious Center at all. And that's so that's not that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about spirituality is that you're personally Personally, individually, seeking a meaningful connection, and meaningful is whatever that means to you, and I'll, I can talk about what it means to me, but a meaningful connection with something that's greater than yourself, and that goes by all kinds of names. I call it spirit, I call it George, you can call it whatever you want, but all of, or intuition, we call it many things, but spirituality is you purposely seeking a meaningful connection with that which is greater than yourself. That is what I. Define as spirituality. So, you know, it's, it's connecting to your intuitive self, which we have. And with all the noise that's going on in our heads and all around us, that voice is so low that without these spiritual practices, we don't hear it or pay attention to it or just poo poo it. And how, how can I possibly know that? That isn't, that's a voice in my head. That isn't something that's real. So. So, getting into spiritual practices where you understand that intuitive self and get closer to that, I believe is, is what, is what I'm talking about when I say spirituality.

Jim: 9:19

And those practices are?

Pjae: 9:22

So the practices meditation and everybody talks about meditation and it's, it can be scary because people think, well, I've got to sit in a particular way and I've got to sit for hours and, you know, I've got to connect with something or whatever it is. And I was speaking with someone a couple days ago and I said, there is a, I think I read this and I tried it myself and it works beautifully. I just call it the ocean breath. It's an ocean breath meditation. And all you do, you certainly want to get someplace where you're not distracted. Some place quiet in nature, on your back porch, in your yard wherever is quiet and peaceful for you so there's no distractions and you simply breathe in like an ocean wave coming in and you breathe out and allow the ocean wave to go back out. So it's just an in and out breathing and exhaling and seeing in your mind's eye the ocean coming in. And the ocean water going out, the wave flowing in and the wave flowing out. If you just do that for like five minutes, you'd be so much more calm and relaxed. Just having that moment with yourself. And I just call it the ocean breath. So that's a meditation. Mindfulness is the very thing we're talking about, which, you know, stepping out and taking pictures and all of that takes you away from mindfulness. Because mindfulness means being present with what is going on with you right now. If you're. In a classroom, I, I wanna use that because I'm taking a lot of classes and doing a lot of classes. So being present with what is going on right then and. Sometimes there's distractions, there's something going on, somebody's running up and down the hallway, or something's going on outside and you think, oh, is there something exciting going on? No, there's something exciting going on where you are right now. So mindfulness is about being aware, just trying to be aware in, in, in the moments where you are and what you're doing. And, and you go in and out of it. So, just like meditation, people think, well, I can't stay in this meditative state for long. It doesn't make a difference. Meditation is really about and I was listening to this meditative person. His name is David G. And he says that meditation is about just spending more time in the, how do you, what was the word he used? I can't remember what the word he used, but essentially you, you just, you're just trying to expand the time when you are in and with yourself. 30 seconds, that is it. And the next time you can do 35 seconds, You've expanded it. Okay. So you don't have to worry about it. I didn't do 30 minutes or just, it's a personal best and just try to expand it every day. You're not going to be able to have the same amount of time. You don't have to worry about that. Well today I did 30 minutes and yesterday I only did five. Great. What you did was you did it for whatever amount of time and that just brings peace and calm into your mind and your body so that when things are going awry outside of you, you have this peaceful place inside you that you can go to. And that's, that's the power of meditation and mindfulness. Contemplation, thinking about things, just thinking about things. What's this about? You know, instead of reacting all the time, just contemplate what's this about? What's it, you know, what, what, who am I? Which is what I'm going to be talking about next week. And, or no, never. I could decide to be next week, but whenever I talk about it who am I really? And why, why do I think that just questioning yourself sometimes that's just contemplation Affirmations and denials. I'm just talking about spiritual practices. So affirmations and denials. So affirmations, I use them together a lot. And it goes like this. When, because we all have these critics in our heads. Whoever they are, whatever voice that may be, there's a critic in your head. When you try to do something Something comes up in your head and says, what is, well, you can't do that. You've never been able to do that. That is something that comes. A denial is to just say that is not true. Then an affirmation is what is true is I can sing or whatever you're trying to do. So you deny the negative and you affirm the positive. Affirmations and denials, or denials and affirmations. That's one way. Or just, just have affirmations all day long. You can wake up affirming. I'm having a good day. I'm a wonderful person. I'm smart. I'm courageous. I'm strong enough. I'm smart enough. Whatever the thing that you doubt, affirm the truth. Or deny what you're doubting, and affirm the truth. So, those are just some

Jim: 13:57

practices. As far as, like, the situation we were talking about at the beginning, where you're with a group, where you're talking to someone, and then there's that issue of Not necessarily your inner critic, but your inner planner, or your inner whatever. Disturber. Yes. Is going on back there, saying, Oh, I have to do this, when I get, and, and,

Pjae: 14:21

and.

Jim: 14:22

Future

Pjae: 14:22

planning. And,

Jim: 14:23

and you can't very well say, Hold on, I need five minutes to meditate here. Because that's taking you out of. It absolutely

Pjae: 14:31

is. But then, so the practices that we're talking about, where you can, you can quietly, as you're talking to someone, you can quietly just let that go. And just keep talking, let that go, and just keep talking. You don't have to. So whenever it's something you don't want to have there, a simple, let it, let this go. That's all you do. Yeah. Okay.

Jim: 14:49

Good. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. A good place to stop there. A whole list of spiritual practices. Absolutely.

Pjae: 14:58

Come back to, come back to this podcast several times and write them down.

Jim: 15:01

Yes. All right. Thank you for being here. Absolutely. My pleasure. And we'll see you next time.

Pjae: 15:06

Absolutely.