Everyone talks about "living in the present moment."

It's the ultimate life hack according to every mindfulness guru, meditation teacher, and spiritual expert with a book deal.

But have you noticed how damn difficult it actually is?

I'd sit down to meditate, focus on my breath for approximately 3.7 seconds, and then find myself mentally rehearsing tomorrow's meeting or reliving that awkward thing I said three years ago. My meditation sessions were essentially time travel expeditions – bouncing between past regrets and future anxieties, with barely a pit stop in the present.

The truth? Most of us have no idea what the present moment actually is or why accessing it is so challenging. And it's not just a spiritual concept – there's hard neuroscience behind why your brain resists the present moment with every fiber of its being.

Dr. Joe Dispenza explains it perfectly in "Becoming Supernatural." Your brain isn't just influenced by the past – it quite literally IS the past. Every neural connection, every thought pattern, every emotional response has been wired by previous experiences. When you wake up tomorrow morning and feel like "you," what you're actually experiencing is the biological residue of everything you've ever been.

This matters because when you're constantly operating from these old neural programs – essentially living in the past – you keep creating the same future over and over again. Your body becomes chemically addicted to familiar emotions, your brain keeps firing the same circuits, and your genes express in the same patterns. You're caught in a time loop, wondering why nothing ever really changes.

But here's the mind-blowing part: The present moment is the only place where transformation is possible. It's the quantum field of infinite possibility – where you can finally break free from who you've been and create who you want to become.

In this letter, I'll break down the fascinating neuroscience of why staying present is so difficult and give you five practical steps to break free from your mental time machine.

The Mental Time Machine: How Your Brain Keeps You Stuck

Your brain is a magnificent record-keeping device. Every experience you've ever had has been encoded into neural networks – clusters of neurons that fire together in specific patterns. These networks aren't just storing information; they're creating your entire perception of reality.

Here's how the trap works:

When you think a thought, your brain releases chemical signals that make your body feel a certain way. When you feel that way, you generate more thoughts that match that feeling. Your thinking creates feeling, and your feeling creates thinking, locking you in a continuous loop.

For example, if you have a fearful thought about an upcoming presentation, you start to feel fear. That emotion influences you to think more fearful thoughts, triggering more chemicals, making you feel more fear. Before you know it, you're caught in a loop that can last hours, days, or even become your default state.

This thinking-feeling loop becomes your state of being. And your state of being is fundamentally anchored in the past.

I used to wake up every morning and immediately feel a knot of anxiety in my stomach. Before I even opened my eyes, my brain would start firing off the day's problems and worst-case scenarios. This wasn't random – I had literally conditioned my body to expect and crave these stress chemicals. My body had become addicted to anxiety like it was a morning cup of coffee.

This conditioning runs deep. Research shows that when you repeatedly experience the same emotions, you hardwire your brain into fixed patterns and condition your body into a chemical past. Your nerve cells that fire together wire together, creating automatic programs that run below your conscious awareness.

Take a moment to consider your typical day:

You wake up, check your phone, go to the bathroom, brush your teeth, take a shower, get dressed, head to the kitchen, make coffee, eat breakfast, commute to work...

It's the same routine, day after day. Your body is essentially on autopilot, dragging you through the same predictable future based on your familiar past. Your thoughts are the same, your choices are the same, your behaviors are the same, your experiences are the same, and your emotions are the same.

The really mind-blowing part? This repetition affects you at a genetic level.

Through epigenetics, we now understand that it's not just your genes that determine your health and life – it's the expression of those genes. And what signals your genes to express in certain ways? Your environment, including the internal environment of your thoughts and emotions.

When you live by the same emotions day after day, your body believes it's in the same environmental conditions. Those feelings influence you to make the same choices, creating the same experiences, producing the same emotions all over again. Your cells are constantly exposed to the same chemical environment, signaling the same genes in the same way.

You're stuck because your genetic expression stays the same. You have no new information coming from the environment to change this expression.

Even if your external circumstances change – a new job or relationship – your body will eventually return to its baseline emotional state if you've spent years conditioning it to certain emotions. Your body will always believe its internal chemistry more than its external conditions.

As Dr. Dispenza says, "You have to think greater than the way you feel to make any real lasting changes."

Beyond Time: 5 Steps To Master The Present Moment

If your brain and body are essentially time machines locked on the past, how do you break free? Here's the process to reclaim your power and access the true present moment:

Step 1: Breaking Your Bonds with the Past

The first step is becoming aware of where your energy is going.

Right now, your attention – and therefore your energy – is fragmented across dozens of people, problems, and possessions in your life. Each one has a neural network in your brain and an emotional bond that drains your creative power.

Think about it:

Your financial worries trigger your addiction to insecurity.

Your social media feeds your addiction to comparison.

Your difficult relationship maintains your addiction to frustration.

Your past mistakes keep you addicted to shame.

These emotional bonds are literally energetic tethers, keeping you locked in the same patterns and preventing you from creating something new.

I realized how much energy I was giving to people who hadn't been in my life for years and situations that were long over. I'd be sitting in meditation and suddenly feel anger about something a former colleague said three jobs ago. That's how powerful these bonds can be – they transcend time and space unless you consciously break them.

There's a meditation technique that begins with becoming aware of these attachments and consciously breaking them. This doesn't mean you stop caring about people or things in your life – it means you stop being unconsciously driven by your emotional reactions to them.

The meditation technique works like this:

1. Sit comfortably with your eyes closed, focusing on your breath.

2. As you settle in, notice when your mind starts wandering to a problem, person, or worry.

3. Don't judge yourself – just observe: "Ah, I'm thinking about that argument with my partner again."

4. Feel where that thought creates tension or emotion in your body.

5. Consciously choose to release that energy by returning your attention to your breath.

6. Each time you catch yourself and return to the present, say internally: "I am breaking this bond."

This simple but powerful practice gradually weakens the neural connections and emotional attachments that keep you stuck in old patterns. Each time you do this, you reclaim energy that can be used to create something new.

Step 2: Shifting Your Brain Waves

Your brain operates at different frequencies throughout the day:

• Beta: The waking, thinking state (where most people spend most of their time)

• Alpha: The relaxed, creative, daydreaming state

• Theta: The twilight state between wakefulness and sleep

• Delta: Deep, restorative sleep

• Gamma: A heightened state of awareness and insight, often experienced during profound meditation

To access the present moment, you need to shift from high-beta (stress and survival mode) to alpha and theta states. This is where the magic happens – where you can observe your programs rather than being run by them.

In beta, particularly high-range beta, your attention is fixated on your body, your identity, and your environment. You're in survival mode, with your brain working in a disordered, incoherent pattern like "a lightning storm in the clouds."

As you slow your brainwaves to alpha and theta, you begin to transcend the limitations of your identity and your physical reality. You move from being "somebody" to being "nobody," from "somewhere" to "nowhere," from "sometime" to "no time."

This shift doesn't happen automatically. It requires practice and patience. The technique is to focus on your breath, allowing your body to relax while keeping your mind alert and aware. Each time your attention drifts to a problem, a person, or a plan, gently bring it back to your breath or a point of focus. Very similar to the meditation technique described above.

I struggled with this for months. My mind was like a hyperactive squirrel, darting from thought to thought. But gradually, I began to experience moments of stillness – brief windows where the constant mental chatter quieted. These moments became longer and more frequent with practice.

Step 3: The Generous Present

Dr. Dispenza calls the present moment "the generous present," and for good reason. It's only in the present that you have access to your full creative power.

When your attention is scattered across past memories and future worries, your energy is divided and depleted. But when you gather all of your attention into the now, you build a powerful electromagnetic field around yourself – like charging a battery.

This is where the science gets truly fascinating. Research shows that when you enter a deeply present state during meditation, you can actually measure changes in the ambient electromagnetic field around you. You are literally calling your energy back to yourself.

The technique is to continually bring your attention back to the present moment, over and over again. Each time you catch yourself time-traveling to the past or future, you simply notice it without judgment and return to now.

This is not a one-time fix but a continuous practice. The body will throw everything and anything at you to maintain its chemical addictions. It will send you thoughts about problems that need solving, people who wronged you, fears about the future – anything to get its familiar emotional fix.

Your job is to keep settling it back down, over and over again, until your will becomes greater than your programming.

Step 4: Moving Beyond Your Identity

One of the most profound concepts I've come across is the idea that to truly access the present, you must temporarily move beyond your personal identity.

Your sense of self – your name, your job, your relationships, your problems, your story – is fundamentally a construct of the past. It's a collection of memories and experiences that you've woven into a narrative called "me."

As long as you remain identified with this narrative, you remain trapped in time.

The technique is to practice disidentification – to observe your thoughts, emotions, and sensations without attaching to them. When a thought arises, rather than thinking "I am angry," you note "anger is present." Rather than "I am a teacher who is struggling financially," you observe "there are thoughts about teaching and money."

This subtle shift creates a space between you and your conditioned patterns, allowing you to step out of the time loop.

I found this particularly challenging at first. My identity felt so solid, so real. But with practice, I began to experience moments where "I" seemed to dissolve, and there was just awareness, just being. These states weren't frightening – they were incredibly peaceful and expansive.

Step 5: Creating From the Field

The ultimate purpose of accessing the present moment isn't just to experience peace (though that's a wonderful benefit). It's to gain access to the quantum field of all possibilities – the place where you turn possibility into reality.

When you've broken your bonds with the past, shifted your brainwaves, gathered your energy in the present, and moved beyond your limited identity, you enter a state where you can begin to create a new future.

This is where mental rehearsal becomes powerful. Just as research has shown that mentally practicing piano can create the same neural changes as physical practice, you can create new neural networks for future experiences before they happen.

The technique is to use your imagination to vividly experience your desired future while in a meditative state. You engage all your senses, feeling the emotions of the experience as if it's happening now. Your brain and body begin to change in response, creating the neurological, biological, and even genetic conditions for that reality to manifest.

When I began practicing this, I was skeptical. But I committed to mentally rehearsing specific outcomes in my life with complete sensory and emotional engagement. The results weren't instantaneous, but over time, opportunities began appearing, circumstances shifted, and my external reality began to align with what I had been practicing internally.

The Time Machine Is Yours To Control

Living in the present moment creates profound changes that ripple through every aspect of life. The constant anxiety and mental chatter that may have been your baseline state begins to quiet. You find yourself genuinely present for conversations, creative work, and even mundane activities like washing dishes.

Does this mean you'll never get caught in old patterns? Of course not. Living in the present is a practice, not a destination. But you'll have the awareness and tools to recognize when you're time-traveling and the ability to bring yourself back to now.

The present moment isn't just about mindfulness or stress reduction – though those are valuable benefits. It's about accessing your full creative power to shape your life instead of being shaped by your past.

So the next time someone tells you to "just be present," you'll understand why that's easier said than done – and more importantly, how to actually do it.

Your mind was designed to be a time machine. The question is: will you let it run on autopilot, cycling through the same past-future loops? Or will you take the controls and direct it to the only moment where transformation is possible – the eternal now?

Cheers,

Darren