This is a phrase I’ve coined to help people understand the process of returning to the way of being of living in the moment.
In our culture, we are habituated to, even addicted to, many things which all shut down our Awareness and our Being. Central to all of them is an avoidance of how we feel and what we are really experiencing in the present moment.
For many people, the habit of thinking in terms of the future, avoiding feeling the ‘now’, has gotten so strong that the choice to start living in the moment brings up all kinds of feelings, thoughts and resistances which frankly can take quite some Receiving.
In this instance, people unwittingly want to ‘Escape the Moment’.
It is totally understandable that living in the moment may be a big deal. In my case at least, avoiding the present moment in favour of living in the future and living conceptually ‘in my head’, rather than experiencing reality directly, had gotten so ingrained over three decades that it has very much been a case of ‘going cold turkey’ on that state of avoidance, in exactly the same way as a drug addict would experience withdrawal symptoms, albeit with potentially less fatal outcomes (although not necessarily).
It is one thing to eat, drink, smoke, watch something, concern ourselves with something, think about something we’re doing ‘next’ out of Choice, but quite another to do it when we’d rather not but are habituated into avoiding the present moment.
The opportunity here is not just for a single moment of becoming present, but returning to an entire way of life of Presence.