Currently Reading: How to Live in the Here and Now; A guide to Accelerated Enlightenment, unlocking the power of mindful awareness

I’m currently reading the book How to Live in the Here and Now; A guide to Accelerated Enlightenment, unlocking the power of mindful awareness, by Paul Jones.  In this post, I’ll share my first impressions and thoughts so far on the book.

When I first found this book on Amazon.com via the recommendations on a page I was on, I was intrigued.  I read the first 6 pages on the Amazon preview, then found the book on Google Books, which by the way has 50+ pages available!  Below are some quotes/excerpts, along with some commentary.

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In the Introduction, the author states that many of our common problems stem from “a disjointed relationship with time and space”, and promises that this book “gives you some of the quickest and simplest techniques and exercises ever developed to achieve Enlightenment, by learning to Live in the Here and Now.”  He also states that “The purpose of this book is twofold;
1. To explain what enlightenment is.
2. To (help you) become enlightened”

From Chapter 2:
“We don’t want to Live in the Here and Now all the time, but neither do we want to be tuned out of the world all the time.  You will learn how to control these two options and you will also learn how to make your own decisions as to where you want your attention to be at any moment.”
As someone who lives “in my head” much of the time (too much), this sounds appealing to me.

From Chapter 3:
“Living in the Here and Now feels like a more ‘childlike’ perception of the world where time seems to be an ever-present Now, yet it is not necessary to compromise any of our other more adult functions to have this.  I believe the ‘fact’ that time perception speeds up as we become adults is not driven by biological factors but by the way we direct our attention, and we can change this easily.”

From Chapter 4: “Don’t be fooled or seduced into pleasant Downtime if it is unuseful.  Avoid it much in the same way you would like to avoid a drug addiction that dissociates you from any discomforts associated with reality.”  Downtime, as defined in the book is “having one’s direction of awareness focused on internal sensory information” vs. uptime: “having one’s direction of awareness focused on external sensory information”.

I’m currently in Chapter 5: How to direct your attention into the Here and Now and get it to stay there.  It contains the exercises “Setting Your Uptime Anchor”,  the “Roadblock Variation” of Setting Your Uptime Anchor, and “Setting Up The Default Position of Your Attention As Uptime”.  I plan to work with the exercises for at least  a couple of days before proceeding through the book, I want to get the most I can from the book by fully utilizing the exercises rather than just reading it and promising myself I’ll do the exercises later.

I’ll be posting more about this book soon, but so far I’m very impressed!



Last Updated: July 5, 2013

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