In the ordinary present, there is no emotional struggle. There is only sensing and doing. Sometimes the doing requires effort. Sometimes doing is easy. Either way, doing is doing.

To create the experience of struggle with something ordinary, we must compare what we are doing now with something we imagine doing that is, in our view, more favorable. In this process of comparison, we suffer the emotional consequences of believing we are not as well off in our current circumstance as we might be if things were different. But things are not different, so with every ongoing moment we punish ourselves and miss out on the present.

Let’s say you are mowing the lawn. In the moment, there is only walking, seeing the green lawn before you, pushing the mower, hearing the motor, smelling the cut grass, feeling the resistance of the wheels over uneven ground, feeling your muscles work, sweating, and so on. This is doing, noticing, sensing. That is all there is to it.

To turn this experience into suffering, you must get away from your senses and into your head. First, you need to remember or imagine – create an internal picture or whisper something to yourself – that something is better than the here and now. You might imagine yourself sitting by the pool with a cool drink at hand. Or, you may think of the television show you are missing, imagining how you could be sitting in the living room, basking in the light of your digital kingdom.

Only by conjuring up these images of a more preferable state can you begin to struggle (mentally and emotionally) while mowing the lawn. Only by comparing your internal image of the present with an internal image of something other than the present can you pull off the state of inner struggle that makes mowing annoying or undesirable.

Attending to the present (your senses) is another matter entirely. Immersing yourself in the sights, sounds, physical feelings, smells and taste of the moment does not leave room for comparison and therefore precludes emotional struggle or suffering with the ordinary. What is left is only the doing, the physical exertion of the moment.

Why must we struggle? Because we compare our present state with other states that we imagine to be more desirable. Is this avoidable? Probably not. Our brains are wired to compare, but that is another matter entirely. We can, however, reduce the suffering by comparison through OHM practice. We can reduce the struggle greatly, in fact.