Me too. But the cool part about it, such as it is, is that we actually have to be paying attention (and then write it down or whatever) whenever we interact with others. No more life on autopilot. We must be live in the moment as your friend suggested. Or we're screwed.

This goes under the heading of "every difficult problem is a solution to another question." As in, how do I avoid being so caught up in my own thoughts and plans that I miss what's in front of me right now? And speaking of which, here's the link to an 8:30 video by Ram Dass, Be Here Now http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S57Gc8PSIO8 ("Identify with your soul, now.") In it, by the way, you can hear that his Hinduism is very close to classic Christian mysticism. As in the words of St. Paul, "put to death the deeds of the flesh by the Holy Spirit" (Romans 8:13).

And Debby, your comment about how life will be as an old woman made me smile. On the one hand, I have been recently reminded by a teacher that enlightened Buddhist masters in Asian monasteries, remain just that. Enlightened, but senile. On the other hand, I thought of one of my grandmothers, who went through most of her life with perfect English diction, only to revert, in the throws if her (too) long affliction with Alzheimer's, to the Lower East Side accent of her childhood. In both cases, the essential self showed through.

Mike