Essay 11 of 12

The Present

“In the Now, in the absence of thought, you find your true nature as Pure consciousness – Pure Being.”

— Eckhart Tolle

Let’s get right to the point: Michael Langford wrote, “Living from thought instead of living from awareness is the cause of all human suffering” [Langford, Michael, The Direct Means to Eternal Bliss, Freedom Religion Press, 20015]. Awareness can be practiced only in the present moment, or as Eckhart Tolle puts it, The Now. Thought, on the other hand, references either the past or the future.

Even if I take an example to try to force thought into the present moment – let’s say we take the thought, “There is an apple in the refrigerator” – that thought still needs the past experience of putting the apple there, or remembering seeing it there. Even if thought is somehow forced into the present as such, it still undergoes interpretation, perceptual processing, and so on, connected to the past or the future. It’s still a memory about where the apple is.

There are no reliable roads that take us away from suffering that do not rely on awareness or mindfulness. And there is no way to embark on these roads – no way to stay in awareness or mindfulness -- without staying in the Now.

Awareness is curative

One of my favorite teachers who has not received much attention till now is Nisargadatta Maharaj, who gave us the following quote:

“That which suffers is not part of me, and dissolves in awareness.”

This statement has so much substantive potential for healing that it will require a short discussion to unpack it completely.

“That which suffers is not part of me...” This segment refers to what Ramana Maharshi and the Dalai Lama refer to as the false “I” that does not actually exist. This is the “little s” self, as opposed to the “big S” or “true Self” which never suffers, and never could. That which suffers is the self that is egoic and nonexistent.

“…and dissolves in awareness.” When subjected to awareness, this “false I” disappears, and its suffering along with it.

Now consider for a moment the recurring discussions up till this point describing the key function of nonjudgmental awareness (NJA). This is the same nonjudgmental awareness that was discussed in the Chapters entitled “Cutting through Egoic Thought Patterns,” “Awakening Together,” “A Course in Miracles,” and others. It is a loose synonym for mindfulness.

In all of these approaches, NJA is the vital precursor to healing. It takes the illusory suffering (born through the nonexistent self) and dissolves it. It is curative.

The present moment, the Now, is the exclusive road to awareness and mindfulness. Indeed, a serviceable definition of awareness and/or mindfulness is the presence of consciousness absent thought. This means that healing requires the present moment, because it occurs as a result of NJA, which in turn can only be in the present, the Now.

In addition, a closely parallel teaching reinforces the concept of the Now –namely, what we refer to as the “I don’t know mind.”

The “I don’t know mind”

In the present moment, with no consideration of the past or future, you do not know what a spoon is for. This is because of the simple reason that your only knowledge of what a spoon is for comes exclusively from the past. The present moment, containing nothing from the past or future, is the embodiment of the “I don’t know mind” – emptiness, or what in Sanskrit is called sunyata .

NTI refers to this state as the “empty shell” (see the “Awakening Together” chapter). This is the only place in which guidance from your “team” can be accessed (“team” meaning angels, spirit guides, Holy Spirit, etc.), or alternatively, the only route through which they can reach you – to guide you, to communicate with you, and to send you divine love.

Just as important is the fact that the ego requires judgment to do its mischief, and the “I don’t know” mind precludes judgment altogether. It doesn’t take you to ignorance – it takes you to purity.

Ramana Maharshi considered his strongest form of teaching to be silence itself. Eckhart Tolle in the Power of Now called this “Presence” – your consciousness in the absence of thought forms. He told us that when silence is mixed up with content, the result is ego-generated suffering. This is precisely what Rupert Spira referred to when he warned against the entanglement of being and experience (see the chapter entitled “The Pathless Path”).

The Now – the only time that exists, in truth

The past is a nonexistent mental image, and the future is an imagined concept, a projection, while the present is the only time that exists in truth. So immersion in the present moment is a declaration of truth -- that you refuse to be duped by illusion.

Stop and really feel that for a moment. The only time that exists. You can say, “Yeah but” in a thousand ways – I have to take my daughter to the dentist, I have to plan a meeting, I need to get this brief written by this deadline – but consider the answers to these questions:

Every time you experience anger, guilt, resentment and so on, you are using mental images created from concepts of the past; every time you experience fear, anxiety, greed, and so on, you are using concepts of the future. Without separate stories of the past and future, there is no time – just stillness, just emptiness, where peace awaits. It is the only place in which we can find truth.

We create the past and the future in our minds. They do not exist in nature anywhere. As our authors have pointed out (e.g., Dr. DiLullo, Byron Katie, etc.) we create this mental activity and then we act as if it were real. As Eckhart Tolle explains in The Power of Now, if you want to stop creating pain for yourself and others – if you no longer want to add to the accumulation of past pain that still lives on in you – then do not create any more time – at least no more than is necessary to manage certain details in life.

Thought either evades or it pursues. It has very little to do with truth, because it is unable to correct itself, since it is based on assumptions that cannot be invalidated within that thought system. These assumptions cannot be invalidated because they are an integral part of the thought system being used. As David Bohm (a physicist at the University of London) observes, “You think you run thought but thought runs you.” It can only be corrected by input from “outside the system” (i.e., outside of thought).

Eckhart Tolle puts it like this:

“The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly – you usually don’t use it at all. It uses you. This is the disease. You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion.

The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. You then begin to realize there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought…that all the things that truly matter – beauty, love, creativity, joy – arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken.”
[Tolle, The Power of Now, 1999, p. 13-14]

He adds that this observation of thought must be done in a nonjudgmental manner, as we have discussed. This is the practice of observation – becoming a witness -- that expands Presence and ultimately brings about awakening.

The creation of time

As stated previously, time does not exist in nature. Your dog knows this! Just looking in his eyes you can see that he is living in the Now, and only in the Now.

The ego creates time to ensure that it remains in control. It seeks to continuously conceal the present moment with the past and the future, obscuring our true nature by covering up the vitality and infinite creative potential of Being. We keep adding more thoughts of the past and the future, further increasing the suffering that accumulates as a result – the residue of pain from problematic events in the past or images of apprehension and fear that surround the future. The ego cements all of this into our thinking to ensure that it has the separated self that it seeks.

How do you stop creating time? You have been in the habit of generating images of the past and the future for so long that it requires mental discipline to change your focus.

“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life… Whereas before you dwelt in time and took brief visits to the Now, instead make your dwelling place the Now and pay brief visits to the past and future when required to manage the practical aspects of your life.”
[Tolle, The Power of Now, p. 28]

Practice this continuously. When you fail – and you will, often – do not judge yourself, but gently and lovingly return your focus back to the Now, as often as you can.

Practicing the Now

We have stated previously that thoughts are like beads on a string, and through practice (meditation), the beads spread out with more and more distance between them. Reality is in the space between the thoughts. As you practice, the spaces become wider, and Presence grows. More support from your “team” becomes accessible (angels, spirit guides, ascended masters and so on) which now has greater access to your mind. You become more serene, more grateful.

Happiness does not require knowing anything. It does not need the past or the future. So put down all of your ideas, hopes, fears, beliefs, values, attitudes, feelings and thoughts. Put them all down on the floor and walk to a comfortable chair. Close your eyes and go to the Still-point (Bernadette Roberts), the Changeless Dwelling Place (Course in Miracles), your Being (Rupert Spira) -- the place inside you where nothing has ever shifted or moved, and never could. This is the timeless Self. This is the only place in which truth can be found.

It takes sustained practice to come to feel this place, but you start to become attracted to it like rushing to your lover’s arms. It feels like love because that’s what it is – your true nature -- the love that you are. Notice that the expression and feeling of love has nothing to do with the past or future. Love is only right here, right now.

Be passionate about this, because the Spiritual Law is that love cannot resist itself. Find where your love resides within you permanently, bring it, and all of the love in the universe will respond to you. This is the peace that passeth all understanding. It cannot be altered, diminished or compromised by anything.

This is why silence was Ramana Maharshi’s greatest teaching. The stillness never moves – it is always there, waiting for you.

“We say ‘God is’ and then we cease to speak, for in that knowledge words are meaningless.”
(A Course in Miracles, Workbook Lesson 169).

The fact is, every single spiritual practice that has been discussed in these chapters up until this point – every single one – requires immersion in the Now. There is no need to list them all, because the requirement applies to All – without exception.

Adding Emphasis of Right Brain Activity

From Iain McGilchrist’s book The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning: Why We Are So Unhappy, we learn that the right brain is more concerned with subjective states, emotion, and the interconnected nuances of reality, whereas the left brain tends to be focused on narrow details in a more mechanistic, functional sense aimed at obtaining or procuring things from the environment. For our purposes here, the right brain is more attuned to being, silence, and meditation, whereas the left brain is more likely to be involved in narrow, focused details within experience.

Meditation thus activates the right hemisphere, balancing the brain toward more well-rounded functioning, away from more typical left-brain dominance. This more well-rounded functioning is more conducive to happiness, living in the present moment, and overall competence – even in job-related settings.

In other words, we obtain better task performance from more balanced brain functioning by making an effort to live in the Now. Thus, the pursuit of spiritual progress by focusing on the present moment brings about the serendipity of a pragmatic benefit to competence within everyday work! People develop more positive attraction to you, completed tasks embody a wider perspective, and so on.

Focus on the Now through the Body or Breath:

A focus on the present moment – the “Now”-- can be sustained either through the meditations discussed in previous chapters (“Awakening Together,” “The Pathless Path”) or through a mantra (“The Way of Devotion” – Yah Vey and “The Way of Wisdom” – I am that I am ). The focus in the present moment can also be held by concentrating on any tactile sensation or parts of the body (relax the face, the shoulders, the arms, etc.), and in particular the breath.

Specifically, any meditation or mantra can be used for immersion in the present simply by listening to the breath. The sound of the breath is always there to anchor you in the present and dissolve the past and future.

Walks in the forest or beach (nature itself); dance (e.g., Zumba and variations on this); Tai Chi and Qigong; Reiki; Yoga; and endless forms of exercise – all create immersion in the present. Even walking can be used to tune into the present.

There is always the option of just focusing on the love that you are, and love is always the greatest exponent of the Now. Remember the Self is love. Remember what we were just taught in the chapter “The Way of Wisdom” in the section entitled “Self-realization:”

Make all things about one thing. Make every thought and every experience an opportunity to be aware of Self. Make this your only purpose, and Self-realization shall certainly become your reward.

Abide as the Self, for the Self is happiness. Nothing can stop this practice unless you let it. Once you give your heart to your angels, they will, with your willingness, pull you into the love that is the Self you share with all of them. To consciously sustain this requires practice over time, but it is definitely worth it.

Always remember this: willingness – determination to reach the goal of happiness – trumps everything (this is the focus of the next chapter entitled “Epilogue – The Golden Key”).

There is No Hell

A Course in Miracles describes what I like to think of as the door to Heaven – the holy instant -- which might be thought of as the way Home through the portal of the present moment. Its only requirement is perfect untainted communication between us -- with each other and God. This implicates the essential role of willingness and staying in the present.

As usual, the words in the Course are far better than anything I could create, and so they are reproduced verbatim below:

Speaking of the holy instant, we are told,

“The Holy Spirit teaches thus: There is no hell. Hell is only what the ego has made of the present. The belief in hell is what prevents you from understanding the present, because you are afraid of it. The Holy Spirit leads as steadily to Heaven as the ego drives to hell. For the Holy Spirit, Who knows only the present, uses it to undo the fear by which the ego would make the present useless. There is no escape from fear in the ego’s use of time. For time, according to its teaching, is nothing but a teaching device for compounding guilt until it becomes all-encompassing…”

[Text, Ch. 15, I, 7]

“The Holy Spirit would undo all of this now. Fear is not of the present, but only of the past and future, which do not exist. There is no fear in the present when each instant stands clear and separated from the past, without its shadow reaching out into the future. Each instant is a clear, untarnished birth, in which the Son of God emerges from the past into the present. And the present extends forever. It is so beautiful and so clean and free of guilt that nothing but happiness is there. No darkness is remembered, and immortality and joy are now.”

[Text, Ch. 15, I, 8]

“Take this very instant, now, and think of it as all there is of time. Nothing can reach you here out of the past, and it is here that you are completely absolved, completely free and wholly without condemnation.”

[Text, Ch. 15, I, 9]

“For the holy instant reaches to eternity, and to the Mind of God. And it is only there love has meaning, and only there can it be understood.”

[Text, Ch. 15, V, 11]

“In the holy instant the laws of God prevail, and only they have meaning. The laws of this world cease to have any meaning at all. When the Son of God accepts the laws of God as what he gladly wills, it is impossible that he be bound, or limited in any way. In that instant he is as free as God would have him be. For the instant he refuses to be bound, he is not bound.”

[Text, Ch. 15, VI, 5]

Here we find the definitive explanations for why the present moment contains everything we want with regard to the realization of happiness and our spiritual truth. Prayer and determination to experience the holy instant would be the only worthwhile addition, as exemplified in the practice shown below:

Your recommended practice

The Course gives explicit instructions on precisely how to become completely immersed in the present. Here there is no room for ambiguity:

“Be still and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is; all concepts you have learned about the world; all images you have made about yourself. Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false, or good or bad, of every thought it judges worthy, and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world, forget this Course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God.”
[A Course in Miracles, Workbook Lesson 189, Paragraph 7]