The Key to Liberation is the Present Moment ~ Katie Davis, Author, Awake Joy

The present moment is the key to liberation,but you cannot find the now as long as you are identified with the mind. The mind is meant to be only a tool that we use to complete a certain task. When we are done, the tool is no longer needed. No doubt about it, the mind is an extraordinary tool. However, whenever it is using you, rather than you using it, it is dysfunctional and causes separation and suffering.

For most people still, they are compulsively thinking all day long. Most of what is going on in the head is repetitive, tedious and basically useless. It is constantly causing stress, anxiety and worry when it is not necessary.

Most are still identified with thinking. In fact, they believe that they ARE their thinking. This thinking and conditioning creates the delusion of a separate sense of self; a false sense of self that is based on our ideas about who we are or conditioned by what others have said about who we are. This false sense is totally dependent upon our continued, habitual thinking. When thinking stops, that false sense of self disappears and we discover the aliveness of now. People are unconsciously misidentifying with the mind.

To the ego, the one whose identity is derived through thinking, the present moment hardly even exists and yet it is virtually all that exists. To the thinking mind, the past and future are all important. The ego needs to keep the past alive. It needs the past since it is the past that is defining who it is. For its continued survival, it then projects who it is going to be into the future. For the ego, happiness and true fulfillment are always just out of reach after some future goal.

Even when the ego thinks that it is seeing the present moment, it is not so. The ego is looking at the present moment with the eyes of the past and blind to what actually is. Or it is busy using the present moment as a means to reach some point in the future when it believes it will gain its freedom or fulfillment.

If you will observe the mind, you will discover how it works and how it is constantly using you. True happiness, peace and aliveness are always here. You just can not realize it until you break the addiction to thinking.

The First Step Toward Enlightenment ~ Katie Davis, Author, Awake Joy

The most important first step toward enlightenment is to dis-identify with the mind. Every time that you recognize a gap in the thought stream, your consciousness grows stronger. You become more curious about the space between your thoughts than the content of thought.

Another way to dis-identify with thought is to direct your attention to the present moment. You will notice a deeper sense of being alive and a subtle joy comes to the forefront. In this, you withdraw attention from your mind activity and create a space of no-mind where you are alert and aware, but not thinking.