What does it mean to live in the present?
| 24, Oct, 18
Living in the present means being in touch with what is happening now: in the environment, in myself, and in the relationship between these two. More than just a present tense indicator, it means focusing our attention on what is happening at this very moment.
"We are present when we accept our experience without resisting it or pretending to be in a different life situation. We do not deny the life we have. We open our eyes and face it with our resources" Carabelli (2013)
The main rule of our perception has to do with attention. What we focus on becomes the figure, and the rest remains in the background. The figure is always in relation to the observer because the perception of objects/situations is much more complex than the sensory stimulation we receive from them, as the observer acts as an intermediary.
Figure: something that reveals itself to me, stands out from the plane, refers to the present, has a contour; becoming aware is grasping a figure; it is what I attend to.
Ground: it is the environment, it is diffuse, the plane where everything exists, from which figures emerge.
One needs to be aware to perceive a figure and resolve the need it brings. Attending to the need and satisfying it appropriately is healthy; thus, the figure will cease to be one and will return to the ground, so that a new one can emerge.
Also, one can choose not to attend to the need; consequently, it begins to draw energy from us to strengthen until it is resolved. We can observe this simply with biological needs, for example, hunger is not satisfied by ignoring it, on the contrary, it will strengthen until we attend to it; similarly, psychological or emotional needs are not solved by repressing them, but by moving through them and accompanying them as they need.Likewise, needs can only be resolved in the present, as it is now that we can intervene; something that happened in the past cannot be resolved because that is no longer the need, now it is another. We must then identify how that past impacts our present, update the need, and resolve it.
As unresolved situations (open gestalts) increase, our ability to focus and attend to new figures decreases. This is why it is important to train our attentional capacity to return to the here and now. The moment I perceive what the figure is, is known as "darse cuenta" (awareness or insight), and it is only through this that I can choose how to address it.
This process occurs on three levels:
- External world: context, environment.
- Internal world: physical, emotions, feelings, thoughts.
- Intermediate world: fantasy, "shoulds," ideation that occurs from the exchange.
To live in the present, we must fundamentally work on: our attention (awareness), our capacity for insight, and our resources to take responsibility. We can train this by performing activities that ground us and connect us with what we are experiencing.
*Questions that help us stay in the present:
How am I?
What do I need?
What am I doing?
What am I waiting for?
What am I avoiding?