Mindfulness or singular awareness of the present produces many benefits. Some of the benefits of mindfulness in this Eternal Now appear at the first experience while others are accumulative. When focused on the transcendent present, one’s thoughts don’t drift toward reliving or regretting the past or worrying or procrastinating about the future. Also, this gentle focus on “Now” reduces the potential for fragmenting one’s thoughts. Fragmentation is a form of subconscious stress we impose on ourselves when we never actually finish or fully engage the thought process such as when we continually participate in the multitasking mentality of this modern age.

In Alvin Toffler’s book, “Future Shock”, he describes life, as it moves into the future, as one being stressed and cluttered with what he calls “overchoice”. Most people have experienced simple examples of this while staring at the seemingly endless shelves of shampoo, deodorant or toothpaste in a store or while watching television with its streams of commercial after commercial. There’s just too much going on for our minds to settle onto any one thing for too long.  Toffler’s definition of “Future Shock” is simply “…too much change in too little time”. Often we think we are adapting well to change only to find out later that it can overwhelm us. But that doesn’t have to be so. The key here is to be practical and not let our consciousness be pulled out of place, but to focus it on where we want it to be.

Consider the great thinkers of history, philosophers, scientists and inventors. Many achieved great things in several different disciplines. Much of this can be attributed to their innate intellect but some was due to their deep focus or total absorption into their studies. Certainly, they did not have today’s distractions but they also had trained their minds to focus. It is on the topic of training the mind that we are presented with options and questions. There are many methods of training the mind for specific tasks such as memory, problem solving, organization and so on. But the easiest and the most practical training one can do to positively influence many areas of thinking (and living in general) is meditation.