Daily Insight from The Little Prince.A friend says that she used to "stay busy." Then she began to shift into a state of presence.As she became increasingly aware-of herself, her life, and why she was doing what she was doing-this heightened level of consciousness began to reflect in her experience of her day."A lot of my activities were just to fill time," she confesses."Now that I am truly allowing myself to get to know myself, I don't feel the need to do everything.I am finally able to do exactly what I want.It's truly liberating.".Do you find yourself filling your day with activity, and yet you are really just going through the motions and not actually connecting with what you are doing from your heart?In other words we go through life having a lot of experiences but not actually experiencing them.The only way to enjoy life is to live it fully in the present moment, so that we in effect braille our experiences, truly connecting with them, being immersed in them.When people begin to awaken to the reality that they aren't very present-that they are doing a lot of things by rote, "just to fill time"-they almost always try to become more present.Trying to be present is a mental approach, the pursuit of a concept of presence.It has nothing to do with the experience of presence.I can't tell you how many people I come across, as well as those who write to me, who are trying to think their way into a higher state of consciousness.When I listen to teachers who advocate "change your thinking, develop new thought" as the way to achieve what we want in life, just to hear them talk about what it takes, let alone to try to actually do what they are saying, sounds exhausting.That's because, once you enter into pure being, so that you are no longer hooked on trying, which is a form of doing, you realize that all of our "efforting" is actually taking us in the wrong direction.It's the opposite of flowing with being.Ultimately, of course, it's not the wrong direction, in that when we've struggled with it for several years we'll likely wake up to the fact it doesn't work.Then we might be ready to relax into simply being.We could, if we are open, save ourselves a lot of grief by going the direct route in the first place.The pilot who has met the Little Prince is keen for us to really "get" that mental concepts of what it means to be "present" in our life are a far cry from the actual experience of consciousness.He's already given us several illustrations of the difference and now presents yet another.The pilot asks how he knows the Little Prince was real, not just a figment of his imagination.He explains that the little fellow was charming, that he laughed, and that he was looking for a sheep.Notice that these are all experiential proofs of the Little Prince's existence.In contrast, says the pilot, most grownups would only believe the Little Prince was real if you were to tell them the planet he came from has been identified as Asteroid B-612.They will believe because now they have "facts"-a mental concept-to go on.Two completely different ways of approaching life. one from thought, the other from present moment experience.The message of this entire fourth chapter of the story of the Little Prince is that if life is to be fulfilling, it's absolutely crucial to move out of the mental and into the experiential.When we drop our anxiety-driven busyness, becoming present and aware, we no longer try to "fill time." We have time at last to be present in each of the experiences of our day.
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