Many spiritual disciplines teach you first how to focus yourself. Total concentration, total awareness, totally in the moment. Unless your are a 100% present - how can you work on 100% transcending yourself?
Unless you arrive in the here and now - you can’t enjoy and live in the here and now.
I agree, being in the hear and now is the best place to be,
well for the majority of the time, and unless you choose to go wandering off in your mind to somewhere nice, of your choosing perhaps.
I use to put myself through a lot of angst recalling the past
or imagining the future,
all those resulting chemicals being released into my body
all that stress
and yet all I may have been doing at the time
was washing the dishes,
something that I was paying no attention to at all.
Following some guided reading on this sort of thing,
I am now better trained, well, most of the time.
@Lisa: Reminds me of the old meditation guideline “the mind is a monkey” - unless you give him something to do he will wander around and annoy you.
But taming ones mind isn’t that easy …
No fakes and no insults please. Thanks!