The Power of Now
Featuring Shannon Duncan
by Sydney L. Murray

Introduction

“...it’s about realizing there are no problems. Only situations to be dealt with in the now, or to be left alone and accepted as part of the ‘isness’ of the present moment until they change or can be dealt with.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

Every spiritual tradition speaks to the power in being wherever you are, right now, in this present moment. How to remain present in the midst of daily life is often the challenge of our spiritual lives. Shannon Duncan has written a powerful book and developed a simple system to help us be just where we are. I had a chance to talk to him about the power of the present moment. and his new book, Present Moment Awaress.

Sydney L. Murray: Can you tell us a little bit about your history?

Shannon Duncan: I've always been a seeker, I've always been very inquisitive, very creative. I enjoy creating something that to the world and others is beneficial. I love seeing other people smile, that's a big motivation for me. I grew up in the Midwest. I hate to be negative, but it was a very narrow-minded community. A lot of bigotry, a lot of gossip. From a very young age I was aware that I just didn't want any part of that. I started questioning what is. I questioned the drama that was around me. From a very young age I realized that I was leading a kind of double life. I could choose to be absorbed by all the things that everyone around me thought were so important, but then there was that part of me that always seemed like it was beyond that. You know, that's a profound realization for someone just eight years old. I can't say what cause brought about that effect. I've pondered that endlessly myself. But, I am thankful that it did. So I've always been a seeker. I've always tried to break down any drama around me to its most basic components. What's real about this moment? What's good about this moment? Of course, I get wrapped up in things like everyone else, but, largely, I just try to stay present. I try to enjoy whatever is going on and make the most of it.

SLM: What is present moment awareness?

SD: Present awareness is a flow. It's allowing it to flow, instead of restricting it, and trying to make what is (everything that's happening around you) into something else. I have a good friend who is a Kung Fu teacher. He teaches Tai Chi. He's teaching me this technique called ‘push hands.’ It's all about flowing. It's a good metaphor for life because once you reach the point where you become stiff and rigid, you get pushed off balance. And it's exactly the same as we go through life. When we become stiff and rigid, when we resist or push back against everything that's happening, we lose our balance and we suffer. It was so illuminating for me to tie something physical together with something very spiritual. That's the best description I can give as to what present awareness is. It's just learning to allow things to flow. All the exercises teach us to be present when we're not.

SLM: Why is being present so difficult?

SD: Being present can be difficult because we grow so used to maintaining a certain way of life. In my book I call it our drama. We're very attached to it. We're used to being almost completely guided by how we feel, by our emotions. From the time we're born we're genetically disposed to possess certain personality traits, but beyond that it's all experience. Our experiences early in life, our experiences up to where we are now, create neural connections. So your perception creates an emotional response. If you're not present, your emotional response dictates how you behave. That's how we get stuck in our drama. That's how we get stuck in situations where we attract the same people into our lives, and we have the same problems, and feel the same way about ourselves. Developing present moment awareness is an exercise of will. There's all this thinking up front. That's the animal part of us that's developed through evolution to keep us alive–to learn what's kept us alive in the past so that we don't make the same mistakes again. That's why dogs leave trails in a yard. Instead of just walking anywhere, they tend to take the same paths because they're predisposed to do that. We walk the same path over and over again because we survived it. Being present is seeing those urges come into place and exerting our will to make a choice. We can't help our previous experiences. We can't help the neural connections that have been made, but we can stay present, and by doing this we're giving our mind a different experience. Now that we've survived in a different way, we have new neural connections that don't invoke such a roller coaster ride of emotions. So staying present is really remaining aware of whatever's happening inside. It's not getting rid of all those thoughts and emotions. But, it is giving ourselves corrective experiences, so that we don't have all of the emotional turmoil that we've had before.

SLM: So just being aware of it is the beginning of the process of changing it?

SD: Yes, and that was really the idea behind my book. To ‘plant seeds.’ It's ‘Have you considered this?’ or ‘Have you looked at that?’ I've found that it's more effective to present it as a possibility rather than a rigid fact. When you're not throwing something in people's faces, they don't get defensive. They at least consider it within the context of their lives and it doesn't invoke emotions that push them away from the idea. And, as such, it's an opportunity to learn.

SLM: Can you give us an example of how this practice has changed your life?

SD: One of the early examples of becoming aware that I was in a pattern was when I was very young. Where I grew up in Northern Oklahoma, racial jokes were very common. Being young and being around it it was normal. I never stopped to question it, or to think that things should be any other way. I never really tied the jokes to people. In my junior high school there was one guy named Stacy who was a black man. I was telling a racial joke one day. I gave the punch line, looked up and saw him looking in my direction. The look on his face shattered my drama. It made me realize that although these things inspired laughter in some, they also had the power to deeply hurt. It really made me start questioning everything about my life. Everything that I considered to be normal, wasn't. You know, how else could it be? Why is it that we look at things the way we do? I began to see how illusionary all of it was. How it's all really just based on thought.

Another example is that I grew up in a household that was very angry and frustrated. Yelling and screaming was the norm. You grow up being told how F!#%@#$ stupid you are and it sets in as kind of a reality. But later in my relationships I noticed those same traits and characteristics coming out of me. I would just have moments where I was so angry and frustrated that that's how I would react. All of a sudden I realized I was acting the way I was treated, even though I hated that and tried to disassociate myself from it. And yet here it was coming out of me. How was that happening? That awareness really set me on a path of understanding how my experiences really were ingrained in me whether I wanted them to be or not. I learned to stay present with it and so I don't have those issues with anger anymore. It started off, I would catch myself ‘after the fact.’ Then I would catch myself as it was setting on. Then I would see more and more subtle symptoms of it beginning. Once I became aware of one piece, the pieces before it would become obvious to me. You know, working with where you are allows you to see where it's coming from, and, as such, I could catch it way before it got out of control. I would just stay present with it. Now it's not even something that comes up anymore.
I think that the absolute key for personal growth is learning tolerance for our own emotions, of being able to sit with them so that they become our advisors and not our rulers. If you have an emotional response, take note. Maybe there's something very real that you need to deal with. But unless you're hiking on a trail and there's a mountain lion bearing down on you, you don't usually need to take immediate action based upon those emotions or feelings. That's really the maze or cycle that we get caught up in in our lives. It's really just the barriers that our emotions put up. If you can learn to tolerate those, you can pass through the barriers and see what else there is. Then you get to experience a different life. The only way out is through.

SLM: How do we transform our core negative beliefs? Can you describe what a negative core belief is?

SD: The first part is accepting them. Realizing that these traits are a part of who we are. They are built into your neural network as a part of your physical being. It's how your brain is automatically going to react within any given situation. Through presence however, you can overcome that because you're retraining your mind to have a different experience. In essence, negative core beliefs are our self-image. They reflect how we feel about ourselves at the deepest level. Often we don't even realize that we feel this way. It's so much a part of the very fabric of our being that we don't even think to question it. We don't question why this person can be successful while we are not. It's moving away from the notion of being inspired, and just looking at what is real. One of my favorite quotes from the book is ‘Aside from the laws of physics, we're only limited by our motives.’ What you do, and what I do is only different based on what we believe is possible. I went from owning a computer security business to writing this book. What I've realized is that whatever I find interesting, I can sit down and learn. I think that everyone can do that. There's nothing special about me. I'm human like everyone else. It's your beliefs. If you're willing to face the uncomfortable emotions that come up when you encounter something new, or if you're willing to walk away from the ‘goody-goody’ emotions that draw you into some obsessive form of thinking, stay on that middle path that Buddha talked about, and you can pretty much walk anywhere.

Part of what I was hoping to do with this book is create a kind of bridge. Many of us (and I've been guilty of this at times as well) take what's called a spiritual leap. We read new concepts. We hear people speak. It makes us feel so good that we absorb ourselves with these ideas. We spend so much time thinking about it that we never actually get there. It's like the difference between thinking about eating fresh strawberries and actually doing it. To do this, it takes some effort. It's not like you have to be somewhere else, but you have to open yourself to the experience. We get so absorbed in the ideas and the good feelings that come with them, that if someone comes along and questions them then we get frustrated and angry because all of a sudden we have to defend these good ideas. We're precariously balanced in these things that we take on and make a part of ourselves. Whereas, when we start deconstructing ourselves, and being present in the moment to see what is, it's a different kind of good feeling. It's not an infatuation, or an obsession, or something to be clung to. It's just a calm, relaxed center. It's allowing life to just flow. When you start clinching up and resisting because what is doesn't reflect how you feel things are supposed to be, that's when you suffer. That's when you're disappointed with life.

SLM: What experiences in your life contributed to this book and practice?

SD: Just life in general. It's just a genuine curiosity about what's real. I keep stumbling across things that I make myself feel good with and then I realize that they're insubstantial and fleeting. It's what Buddha called impermanence. Everything is flowing and constantly changing. All that we really get is experience. We have our senses to experience each moment. Everything else is created in our minds. All memory, all anticipation, expectation, fear, worry, it's all created in our minds. All we really have is this moment. Once I realized that I could question, and that things are always how we think they've been, I've just gone deeper and deeper into paying attention to how much that's really true. When you start stripping away the illusions, everything comes back to awareness of each moment. Generally speaking, it's all that really exists. We live much of our lives as if we were watching television, because when we're watching we become so absorbed that we tune everything else out. It controls our thoughts, our emotions, and what we're doing at that time. In a lot of cases, we're missing out on what we really have. The moment is all that we get. Everything else is an illusion.

SLM: We as Americans are usually taught not to engage in our emotions. Why do you think that is?

SD: I believe it's passed down from generation to generation. We are this way because we grew this way. Ever since we started a system of what is more or less, better or worse, we started having to cling to those ideas in order to get a sense of value. Those who had more of something tended to be looked up to by those who had less. And those who had more tended to look down upon those who had less. We started this whole system of valuing ourselves based upon what we have, what we do, and what we accomplish. This ‘system’ has been handed down from generation to generation and it only seems to have been intensified. Being raised in an environment like that, our sense of self becomes very damaged. We lose that connection with who we are, with our sense of value. We lose sight of the fact that just being alive is a blessing. We take life for granted. We feel like ‘what I am is never good enough,’ and ‘what I have is never enough.’ It starts when we are young and becomes a model for us. It's how we were taught. And so the notion we have, the self image, is that we can never have enough because there's always something more to have. Whatever that more is, we constantly tend to determine our sense of value based on what we possess. We're all guilty of this and we start feeling a sense of shame when we feel like we're being judged by others. Our eternal state is so set, and we're so absorbed in how others mirror us that we can't help but feel badly. It's through staying present in the moment that we can realize that these feelings are not real. It is through developing discipline and awareness that we can realize what that cycle is and rise above it. We are no longer being ruled by our emotions, but seeing them for what they are.

SLM: Our theme for January is optimism. What does Optimism mean to you?

SD: Well, I think that beyond the control that our thinking creates within our lives, we have the ability to exert our will. The will is more intense. It's beyond our methods of day-to-day thinking which trigger all of our emotions. So, to set your will, your intent to be positive, to be optimistic and to look for the good in life, those things will become more and more apparent to you. Even though you're having a hard time or feeling blue, setting your intent to be optimistic can be a powerful force in your life. For instance, when you're going out and dating, and you're sure that people won't like you then that's what you're going to see. And unless someone comes up an smacks you on the head and says ‘Hey, I like you!’ you won't be shaken loose of your misery. Whereas, if you say to yourself that you're a likable person, and that eventually you'll meet someone that likes you for you, you're going to open yourself up to that opportunity. So a positive, optimistic state of mind, has a very powerful influence on how you live and experience your life. All you get out of life is how you perceive it. What most people miss is that each individual can determine this for themselves. You can accent by exerting your will.
The key to personal growth, aside from tolerance of our own emotions, is to set your intent to grow, to be honest, and to know what's real from what is not. Be willing to be REALLY honest with yourself about things that make you uncomfortable and why. Also be willing to be honest with yourself about your positive traits and characteristics as well. We really need to remember that we all have value as living, breathing beings, and nobody can take that away.

Shannon Duncan developed the concepts for Present Moment Awareness and the PMA System over the course of many years. His work is a distillation of personal research and experience in psychology, philosophy, spirituality and meditation. His book, Present Moment Awareness: Start Enjoying Your Life–Right Here, Right Now, is now available. To find out more, call 886/438-7626 or visit www.pmasystem.com.