dropping in

My friend shared an expression with me the other day. He called it dropping in. The idea of it is that you drop back into the present whenever you happen to notice that life is sweeping you out of it again. Life will sweep you out of the present all the time.

On one hand, that's not true. Life can never sweep you out of the present for real, because the present is all there is. But staying in touch with the present is another story. Overall we tend to drop out of the present. That's why dropping in restores us.

It's something you can do any time. You simply notice, repeatedly, that you aren't as present to your life as you'd like to be. Your thoughts are elsewhere. You're thinking about the past and the future a great deal and the present is fading from awareness.

That's the time to drop in again. Aha! I'm not in touch with the present experience of my life anymore. You might say something like that, and drop back in. It's a form of mindfulness and meditation. It's the opposite of turning into your thought process.

When you do it, when you drop in and become present again, you steal some thunder from the thought process. You tell it who's boss. For that moment of return to the present anyway. It's like saying to your mind that life is outside it and you want life.

You should try it. The next time you notice yourself thinking a lot, drop in again. Let yourself be present instead. Notice the present experience of your life, the life that is going on outside your mind, the life we all share outside all our minds. Drop in.