Present Moment Awareness

To have your consciousness focused entirely on what the present moment has to offer is one of the most difficult tasks to accomplish, but also one of the most satisfying if achieved. One of the main reasons that it is so difficult is that the mind has a tendency to wander, to follow some thread of thoughts that are not part and parcel of what the here/now experience entails. To aid in present-moment awareness I find it best to concentrate on one's breathing as a subtext to the moment-to-moment experiences. Strangely enough, repeating a mantra over and over again in one's mind seems to do the same thing, though not to the same degree. One mantra that I find myself mentally repeating over and over, almost obsessively, is one I picked up from Leonard Orr's book Breaking the Death Habit, though I don't recall the meaning, is "Om Namaha Shivaiya". This is just a stab in the dark, but it could be a praising of the name of the Hindu god Shiva. That is just my guess, Leonard Orr doesn't say this. It does seem to have a calming effect on me, and this is purely a subjective observation, but I believe it has changed potentially negative experiences to the positive.... or maybe being calm in a stressful situation can change that situation to a more positive one. Just a thought.