Thanks for sharing your stories ...
I suppose my experience is actually quite different ... I was always very sensitive to the "now" quite naturally, ever since I was a child. Somehow, perhaps because of my natural disposition, perhaps my family upbringing, (or perhaps having been a Buhhdist monk in a past life, hee hee...), I have naturally been "in the moment" in whatever I do.
Yes, I do enjoy meditation as an exercise to quiet my mind, but when I finish and move on to doing something else, I still feel very aware of the moment. In a sense, all of my life is like a meditation, even when I'm not explicitly meditating. I suppose that's why I sense a conflict when some guru tells me I have to follow a certain regiment of "daily" this-or-that, because to me, my life is one continuous flow of a single action: Being. There's no difference to me when I'm doing something like Qigong and when I am not. To me, everything is Qigong.
I like that Zen story:
A student once asked his teacher, "Master, what is enlightenment?"
The master replied, "When hungry, eat. When tired, sleep."
Anyway, thanks again for the delightful discussion ... I wish all of you well on your own paths.
