Every Moment Is Infinite
Sometimes, we awaken to panic and despair when we realize how many of our years had managed to slip away virtually unnoticed. We may blame our hectic lifestyles and the demands of work and family.
The truth is, if we don’t dwell in every tiny moment that makes up our reality, our whole lives will have passed uneventfully. Every moment is immensely sacred in its own right. To awaken to the present moment is to experience the sanctity of being alive.
We may consider getting married and giving birth to a child as exceptionally significant moments in our lives. In fact, they are. However, if we reduce our lives to a handful of memorable moments, the countless other moments that make up our existence will have seemed pointless. If birthdays, anniversaries, and other milestones in our lives can have so much meaning for us, then why not the present moment, the moment in which we are truly alive? This is not to say that we should not celebrate our birthdays and anniversaries- just that every moment has an intrinsic value in itself. Attention is what gives meaning and significance to everything. By attending to every moment, however mundane and uneventful it may seem, with great care and diligence, we render it as special as our wedding or birthday.
We all know that infinity is made up of an infinite number of smaller moments. A lifetime is also made up of an infinite number of smaller moments. So is a single second! If we are able to dwell in the infinitesimally small moments that make up every second in our lives, then we can experience infinity itself. Time would seem to stand still. This is why we often experience the quality of timelessness during meditation. Attending to every moment means attuning our awareness to the tiny yet infinite moment that is now.
Mindfulness is the art of arriving at the present moment. By inhabiting our bodies, accepting all things that are happening both inside and outside of us without resisting, without scheming for an escape, we arrive at the present moment. When we can say to ourselves (and really mean it!), “This is it, I am here,” there is nowhere else to go. Mindfulness is the quality of being here now, as opposed to wishing to be somewhere else. Being here now means dwelling in the present moment and actively participating in the unfolding of our own reality. Mindfulness is often described as “moment-to-moment” awareness. “Moment-to-moment” implies that there are boundaries dividing our moments. Ideally, we do not want to experience time as a succession of moments ticking away like a clock. What we want to experience is this moment and to dwell in the eternal stillness that is this moment. But we all know that this is humanly impossible. The boundaries are really lapses in mindfulness. The key is not to fret over these lapses, but to inhabit our bodies and attune our awareness to the here and now.