How can one drop into the Now?

Whenever you are observing what your mind emotions are doing, witnessing what is going on inside you, the state of presence is already arising. You can watch all of this, how noisy your mind is. When you’re suddenly aware of it, that ability to watch means you’ve dropped out of the time-bound state. Something has arisen that is very different. I call it the state of presence.

So, again, one could almost say there is no how. That state of consciousness, which I call the state of presence, being fully present in the Now, is the state of high alertness. Some people have experienced it in certain situations of great danger accidentally. That can be good if one remembers being in a state of intense aliveness where there was also absence of thinking and of mental noise, just a state of intense alert presence.

People who climb mountains or engage in other dangerous activities love that state. It’s the only time when they can be in that state. If they were in past or future climbing a steep wall they wouldn’t survive for very long. So, in some situations you’re forced into a state of presence and it’s so alive and fulfilling that the old state becomes very unsatisfying.

Eckhart Tolle