Why Is Presence So Difficult?

The dirty little secret about meditation, presence, and mindfulness is that it’s hard work!

Somehow we seem to think that “doing nothing” should come really easily and so we tend to get easily frustrated and give up when we struggle to get into meditation or even just into the present moment.

It is really difficult to stay present. I’ve been practicing it my whole life, yet I rarely am truly in the present.

You can feel when it’s working (and I think there are a lot of people who have never experienced being truly completely in the present). For me when I come into the present, suddenly the world feels much more 3D. I know that sounds weird! But it’s like objects become sharper and the space between objects starts to feel solid. Sounds are all over. And even pain doesn’t seem to exist in the present. In the few times I’ve managed to come fully into the present moment, I’ve found that pain almost entirely disappears because in that moment there is no build up of pain from previous minutes and no expectation of ongoing pain into the future minutes.

It’s so difficult to put into words, but it is really a startling thing to experience.

I wish I could do it more often. Yet I only manage it very occasionally. I think my mind is really afraid of me doing it more. Afraid that I won’t need it as much. It wants to think its thoughts. It doesn’t want to pause for even a minute or two!

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Have you done your four minutes of meditation today?