It is hard to be present. We are always thinking about the future or the past, but are rarely in the moment. It is also hard to do when you try to be in the moment, you start to think about it and the moment is gone, you can’t ‘catch’ it. A bit like when I tell you to not think of a pink elephant, you’ll think of a pink elephant.
You can think of your brain, your consciousness, as a multi-layered mechanism. There’s kind of a core base kernel level OS that’s running. Then there’s applications that are running on top. These applications can be monkey feelings (hungry, horny, anxious,…), thoughts about the future or the past. They can cloud your mind and give you an overwhelming feeling when a lot is happening at the same time. You reach the max of your CPU speed and your RAM is clogged.
Being in the moment, you are actually going back to your awareness level of OS, which is always calm, always peaceful, and generally happy and content. You try to stay in that mode and not activate the monkey mind, which is always worried and frightened and anxious, but serves incredible purpose. Try not to activate that program until you need it. If you’re running it 24/7, all the time, you’re wasting energy and it becomes you. The anxious, hungry, horny monkey.
Being in the moment is the ability to close all applications and to go back to the basic OS and just sit there idling. No real mental focus, desire or train of thought. Just in the moment. The best ‘close all applications’ exercise I’ve found, is meditation.