Source Citation:Dixit, Jay. ”The art of now: six steps to living in the moment: we live in the age of distraction. Yet one of life’s sharpest paradoxes is that your brightest future hinges on your ability to pay attention to the present.(Cover story).” Psychology Today 41.6 (Nov-Dec 2008): 62(8). General OneFile. Gale. ALAMEDA COUNTY LIBRARY SYSTEM.
“A FRIEND WAS walking in the desert when he found the telephone to God. The setting was Burning Man, an electronic arts and music festival for which 50,000 people descend on Black Rock City, Nevada, for eight days of “radical self-expression”–dancing, socializing meditating, and debauchery.
A phone booth in the middle of the desert with a sign that said “Talk to God” was a surreal sight even at Burning Man. The idea was that you picked up the phone, and God–or someone claiming to be God–would be at the other end to ease your pain.
So when God came on the line asking how he could help, my friend was ready. “How can I live more in the moment?” he asked. Too often, he felt, the beautiful moments of his life were drowned out by a cacophony of self-consciousness and anxiety. What could he do to hush the buzzing of his mind? 
“Breathe” replied a soothing male voice.
My friend flinched at the tired new-age mantra, then reminded himself to keep an open mind. When God talks, you listen.
“Whenever you feel anxious about your future or your past, just breathe,” continued God. “Try it with me a few times right now. Breathe in … breathe out.” And despite himself, my friend began to relax.
You Are Not Your Thoughts
LIFE UNFOLDS IN the present. But so often, we let the present slip away, allowing time to rush past unobserved and unseized, and squandering the precious seconds of our lives as we worry about the future and ruminate about what’s past. “We’re living in a world that contributes in a major way to mental fragmentation, disintegration, distraction, decoherence,” says Buddhist scholar B. Alan Wallace. We’re always doing something, and we allow little time to practice stillness and calm. “
