Questions

1. Sometimes certain thoughts will keep repeating or I’ll keep running a scenario through my mind, especially after something “bad” has happened, how do I free myself from those thoughts while or before they happen? Not just for a brief moment, but until I’ve truly let it go?

We’ve all been conditioned to behave in similar ways. Eckhart Tolle asks: Focus your attention on the now and tell me what problem you have at this moment? There is no answer because it’s impossible to have a problem when your attention is fully here, in the Now.

When a thought passes, you watch it go by like a cloud.

2. How do I stop imagining future based scenarios?

By consistently practicing awareness. Watching is what should lead you into action. Watching, silently, you see what the situation is, and out of that, you act.

3. Is there a time when you can stop practicing presence, like say when you no longer feel the need to defend your self image or enhance it in any way or anything like that? When?

The present moment is all any of us ever has. Why would you want to stop practicing presence?

4. How do I know when I’m thinking productively vs thinking non-productively?

Productive insight is best generated through present moment awareness.

5. How do you really know when you are present?

By being fully present one is awake. If your mind is chattering, you are asleep.

Wakefulness is the way to life.
The fool sleeps as if eh were already dead,
But the master is awake and he lives forever.
He watches, He is clear.
How happy he is! For he sees that wakefulness is life.
How happy he is! following the path of the awakened.
With great perseverance he meditates, seeking freedom and happiness.

- Buddha