Being Present

As we keep saying, it is rare to experience anyone totally in the moment -
ever. We usually assign our actions, speech, thoughts to the automatic part
of our brain. We just take phrases and clichés from the data bank of our
memories, and string them together into a sentence. So rare we are really
there in a unique creative moment.

I know you may not agree, so I suggest you carry out an experiment.
For one day, or at least an hour or so, be really, really present with every
single world you utter. Every syllable would be better. Say, everything you
say. Nothing automatic. Not a single cliché.

With our children we are usually even more remiss. It is rare we actually
speak to them as a human being. We forget what it was like when we were
young. We do not treat them as equals. Yet it is very rare that children are
not more intelligent than their parents! All they really need from us is our
experience - in order to learn what not to do, the way we have done it!

Try it out. Be absolutely creatively present in everything you do, say, and
think - even for just a short while. It is exhausting to start with, then
after a while you can enter into a whole new level of living.