Walking to the subway in a fug of thought – planning three steps ahead, I realised I was oblivious to my surrounds and could have been anywhere. I wondered what I would notice if these were my last moments and pop! the street came alive. I noticed the patter of rain drops on my face and I realised the building next to me was derelict and dust was pouring out of the open windows, like candy floss.

A week later the world is still magically alive. Walking through SoHo last night, I saw beautiful brickwork I’d never noticed before; Gaudi-like fenestrations; colorful tropical songbirds singing arias in the trees, (it’s full spring migration). Yes, it felt a bit like a Disney-movie. All it needed was for me to wake up and notice my surrounds

I suspect one reason we slip so easily out of the present moment is because of our super power. We have a magical gift whereby we can teleport in our minds to other worlds. We open a book and suddenly we’re off to 19th century China witnessing a foot-binding. At the movies, we can fly through the air alongside a Marvel adventure hero, or live through the peril of someone lost at sea. Have you ever truly thought how strange and magical this skill is?

In Michael Newton’s book Journey of Souls, the interviewees (who are hypnotized to recall their life between lives) say this skill is encoded in our souls. In the afterlife, we learn by projecting our disembodied selves into something called, ‘life books’. It’s like entering a holographic world, where we can experience different versions of a previous life (how things would have played out if we’d made different choices), or we can experience snippets of a future life – to see if we like our parents, country and career, before entering a new body.

If Newton’s subjects are right and our souls are primed to jump out of the present into other dimensions, is it any wonder that when our human world is painful, stress-filled or just plain exhausting, we  jump eagerly into another realm. It would explain our love of movies, TV, books, art and stories. And why almost daily our imaginations generate other scenarios  – some positive and others fear-filled.

But nothing effects me as strongly as the present –  to see, hear, feel, smell, taste and touch what’s happening now.  It imprints my soul in a way nothing else does.  And maybe that imprint is why we are here.