A Mind Empty of Itself
To completely empty the mind is to die a psychological death—a death that is necessary if you hope to become fully present. A full mind is diametrically opposed to being present in the Now. A mind occupied with thoughts lives exclusively in time: When we think, we think of either the past or the future—i.e. we lament something that has happened, replay a pleasant experience we want to hold onto, savor the fading delectation of a snack just finished, anxiously anticipate a presentation we have to give at work later in the week, etc.
It is not possible to think and remain in the Now. Investigate this for yourself and see that it is true. For example, let’s say you’re having dinner with a friend. Can you think about the experience of having dinner with your friend and somehow remain in the Now? No, you can’t. If you start to think about some aspect of the experience—the food, your friend’s outfit, the server’s attitude—you are consequently ruminating on some aspect of the experience that has already happened; for example, your friend may be presently wearing the outfit on which you are ruminating, but your contemplation is based on an image your eyes fed to your mind a split second ago. Granted, this contemplation is happening about something closer to the present than if you were thinking about an event from last year, but it is nevertheless at some remove from the Now. Thinking is always about something that is in the distant past, the immediate past, the immediate future, or the distant future. Thus, thinking always takes us out of the present.
Falling into the Now only happens when thinking comes to a complete stop. This is one reason why meditation has as its goal the cessation of thought. Self-enquiry—as explained elsewhere on this site—is another strategy for bringing thought to an end. This is not to say that thinking doesn’t have any practical use—it certainly does. But in order to make the vertical shift into the present moment, one must still the mind.
When one becomes present for the first time, it can feel like a sort of falling, and can be a bit unsettling. If you’ve ever been on a rollercoaster, you know the experience—it’s the feather-light falling-upward feeling at the very beginning of a big drop. It is simultaneously scary and exhilarating.
