Try to pay attention to the sensations that are here, now. Within seconds some thought will draw you away. We are so conditioned to focus on our thoughts that attending to the present is unusually difficult. To add to the challenge, you won’t even notice. Thoughts masquerade as present sensations and deceive us into feeling that we are attending to the moment. Often we think about the moment — those thoughts are at least close to the present. You suddenly feel cold so you think “cold.” The average thought doesn’t end there. Instead, it “proliferates” — it grows, multiplies, and spirals out in many directions. You begin thinking about a warm sweater, what it looks like, how nice a hot cup of coffee would be, and oh yea, shouldn’t I get back to what I was doing?
These spirals happen so reliably and so rapidly that most of our lives are spent attending to everything other than what is happening now. Yet there resides the power to change your life. To structure peace, you must train yourself to spend more time in the present. There, you can see things as they truly are. There, you can evolve.