Present Moment Awareness
is a slightly intended, consciously realized and relatively continuous awareness contact in the present. Through the breath and body we may begin to experience the present as an unbroken chain of not-thinking awareness moments.** Experiencing this brings with it a far more profound and meaningful sense of freedom as compulsive attraction around objects, thoughts and emotions begin to be seen into and through. Present moment awareness is a doorway through which achieve less awakening can be realized.

A Primer to the Present Moment
Research suggests that the smallest increments of time that humans can register, in terms of our actual physiological limitations, are about 50 milliseconds in length, or 20 'events' per second. While this is not important per se, it does help to define the present moment in its basic element.

The first task (of three) of staying present is to simply note all habitual thought and judgment, beginning from the first second that we place our attention on the present moment throughout the length of the exercise. Habitual thought is defined as being free associating or linking story-line thoughts one after the other. Judgmental thought usually revolves around the perceived productivity or usefulness of just sitting over an extended period of time. When we first start to sit, or when we begin to sincerely apply ourselves, staying present begins to recondition our thinking patterns. This is often a difficult task because we begin to collide with conditioning. 

Remain present using the sound or sensation of the breath and breathing. This is a good way to become quicker at recognizing when we are coming from awareness. Since the breath is never anyplace else but the present, we can use it as an anchor. We can also use bodily sensations to remain present.  

First, we become aware of our mind and thoughts. And secondly we remain relatively present over extended periods of time through awareness of our breath and body sensations. But now, irrespective of how we may or may not have conditioned our minds up to that point, you may experience a distinct change in the quality of how you experience time. This space exists in openness; it cannot be achieved as such. There's nothing we can do to awaken. We are simply open to it.

What has already happened is letting go, the third task. Doing so is not a mental act, an act of will, or anything that you can purchase on a website! Letting go is surrendering; it's a piece of wisdom. And we claim this wisdom through insight. Insight into the fact that there's absolutely nothing we can do to let go (to awaken). Realizing letting go, over and over again, is a kind of jump less jump into the present moment. And no one can say what would be required of you awaken or to liberate -whether you've sat motionless and conditioned the mind in a cave in India for a million years or sat for only a minute in your basement. In other words, it can happen to anyone at anytime under any condition.

Once you know that you can remain relatively present over a period of time, a world of virtually limitless awareness depths and qualities may open to you. But what happens next may be conditioned by two things: 1) the structure or makeup of your psychology, as indicated by your birth chart particulars. And, 2) what you may be ready to see, hear, sense or experience in the current now, as indicated by your chart's current transits or conditioning factors. 

To sum, we note any judgment, bring mindfulness to our immediate, inner and outer circumstances and let go without doing any such thing. This is what is to abide in the present moment in terms of its relative (present moment awareness) and transcendent (awareness as the present moment) dimensions. In a matter of speaking, the present moment is both a skill and an exercise in realizing Being. 



* Quoted from the forthcoming title, 'Astrology of the Present Moment.'  

** 'Not-thinking awareness moments' doesn't mean that thinking isn't happening. Rather, it means that as we are relatively centered in awareness, thoughts may come and go, but we are not taken out of the awareness moment by them. As always, allow thoughts to do what they do. But as we are relatively centered in awareness, we don't exit the moment. My experience of awareness is that it's a kind of extra-sense perception in which thoughts may or may not be happening, but that does not matter. We simply remain present with the breath and/or body awareness.