To change yourself at now!

Unspeakable Power of Now!

If you focus on the present, your life will be constantly renewed. The present moment is the only time that is eternal. It never dies, nor can it be forgotten. Therefore, happiness in the present can never be taken away from you. It will free you from the snare of time, which brings about suffering through thought, evaluation, and analysis. Being fully in the present, you experience the timeless. In the timeless, you find your true

Although we have all heard that we should live in the present and not in the past, there is a deeper spiritual lesson to be found in those words. Before a thought arises in your mind, you are in a timeless state. After a thought has served its purpose, whether it brings up a desire or the memory of a past event, you return to that state of timelessness. There, you don’t need a reason to be happy. You just are. Happiness based on reasons is actually another form of misery. 

Whatever the reason for your happiness—a good relationship, a pleasurable situation, or material possessions—it can be taken away from you at any moment. Therefore, your happiness is fragile and dependent on externals. Happiness without reasons is real happiness. It is frequently referred to as bliss. This is a happiness that can never be taken away. 

You don’t need to seek bliss, nor do you need to feel nostalgic once you’ve experienced it. Bliss is available now. So what is the now? We can call it present-moment awareness, which is a good phrase because it reminds us that bliss cannot be found by remembering the past or anticipating the future. The present has no time span. 

The instant you try to measure the present moment, it disappears. So the now is ever-renewing. It is timeless because time cannot stop it. The now can never grow old or die. Time is a mysterious phenomenon, but we know that it is subjective, and we use it to measure experience.

Each of these experiences of time is personal. The whole problem of time is that we always make it personal. Whether you regret something in your past or worry about something in the future, you are creating changes in your body. In other words, you are spending much of your life metabolizing time. 

Every experience in your life has been metabolized in your physical body and influences your biological clock. In fact, biological aging, with all its consequences of infirmity, suffering, and unhappiness, is nothing other than the metabolism of time. Even the momentary recall of a past trauma makes you suffer all over again. 

Good experiences are also the metabolism of time, but they don’t put wear and tear on the body. The wisdom traditions of the world put enormous attention on solving the problem of time because bliss, the kind of happiness that needs no reasons, can only happen in the present moment. If your life is trapped in the passage of time, your body will also be trapped. But if you can escape the clutches of time, your body will be transformed by the experience of bliss. 

Here is the solution that the wisdom traditions arrived at. Time, they said, is the movement of consciousness, or put simply, the movement of thought. The real you, which lies beyond thought, can only be found in the now. Your true self, existing in the eternal now, is neither an observer nor an object of observation. As soon as a thought arises in your mind, however, an observer appears, along with the object of observation. 

Thus we find that each person exists in two realities. First, is the silent state of being that is not captured by time; this is the home of bliss. Second, the relative world is full of experience; the mind lives in this world by constantly acting as the observer focused on an object of observation. When you put your focus on the present, you are aligning yourself with the first reality and its potential for happiness that can never be taken away. 

But if you focus on the second reality, with its constant change of scenery, your mind will be captivated by time. Time will then bring about all the negative effects we have already mentioned. When you focus on the present moment, you don’t give up the relative world. You will still participate in everyday life, but with a difference. You will no longer identify with change. The ups and downs of fortune will not shake you from your true self. Ordinarily, we are so caught up in the changing scene that we don’t notice that we’ve slipped out of the present moment. 

It’s important to recognize that all unhappiness exists in time. Another way to understand this is that time is born when your true self has been sacrificed for your self-image. We’ve already touched on self-image and its false promises. Time, being the movement of thought, uses your self-image or ego as your internal reference point. If you look closely at what is happening in your mind, what do you see? 

You are constantly evaluating every experience. 
You are comparing yourself to something that seems better or worse. 
You are rejecting some things and choosing others. 
You are building up a story. 

None of these activities is actually necessary. They merely accumulate reasons to be happy or unhappy. One way to do that is to compare your situation with someone else’s. But as you build your story and look around to see if it is better or worse than your neighbor’s, what’s happening? You’ve moved away from the natural state of happiness that exists in the now. Experience is. You don’t have to use it to build up a story. The ego loves melodrama, so it seizes upon every experience to construct a never-ending tale about how your life is going. The tale can be good or bad, dramatic or boring, self-centered or relatively selfless. 

But what if you had no story? Your life would be much simpler and more natural. You would have no self-image to defend. You would have no fear of tomorrow because, with nothing at stake about how your story is going, you could accept any experience and let it go. In that state, both freedom and bliss reside. One of my favorite sayings is that being here is enough. When people hear this, particularly successful people whose lives are full of projects and accomplishments, they look confused. 

To them, “being here” sounds passive and empty. Yet think about it. As they pursue lives that are so full of activity and goals, most people are not fulfilling their being. Quite the opposite. They are running away from a deep-seated fear that life is empty unless you constantly fill it up. One time I saw a great spiritual teacher is confronted by a person in deep distress. This person faced the prospect of losing all his money and his job. He felt desperate, and he wanted to hear what a wise man would tell him. 

After he recited his tale of woe, the great teacher replied with a simple answer: “Souls don’t break. They bounce.” Fear has been lying to us, as is so often the case. If you could allow your mind to stop participating in the endless pursuit of goals, time would stop. You would experience your being. At that moment, you would realize that “being here” is your rock, your foundation. The quality of being leads to the quality of consciousness. 

The quality of your consciousness determines the quality of your life. We all owe our existence to the fact that existence isn’t empty. The ego drives you to identify with the changing world. It keeps your focus on everything but your being. Think of all the things you have a stake in—home, family, career, money, possessions, status, religion, politics, and world affairs. They are all ego creations. They are housed in the complex edifice of time. When you break through the barrier of the ego, you also break through the barrier of time. The eternal now is the junction point between the un-manifest, invisible world of spirit and the manifest, visible world that you accept as real. 

Few people know that they live in both of these realities. Still less do they know that the un-manifest, invisible world is their primary reality. Compared to it, the visible world is a playhouse of shadows. So when you focus on the present moment, you are actually looking through a window to the unbounded timeless reality from which the entire universe arises and to which it subsides. The outer world arises in every moment of now. Its next birth is never the same as the one that came before. Constant change is the rule; constant transformation upholds every process, including the process of life. 

So your true self can be defined as a still point surrounded by transformation. If you allow yourself to be absorbed in this still point, you will be changeless in the midst of change. You need to learn to separate the moment from the situation. They aren’t the same. The situation surrounds the present moment. It can be unpleasant and painful or the opposite. But the situation, whatever it is, arises and subsides. It will pass. 

The eternal now, which is always present, will remain. People talk about having so much pain that it is inescapable. But all such pain is born of thought and is therefore changeable. I have seen patients with severe chronic pain, and when a few of them were able to separate their situation from the present moment, all but miraculously their pain disappeared. They had transcended a pain born in time. This taught me that even the most extreme situations can be transcended. In order to transcend your situation, you must cultivate a new style of awareness, where you have your attention on what is, and you see the fullness in every moment. 

Most people are not actually focusing on what is. They are overshadowing the experience of what is with what could be or what was. The past and future dominate their attention. When you embrace what is with your whole attention, you will be immersed in the fullness of the now. So how do we cultivate this new form of attention? Primarily through mindfulness. Mindfulness means “paying attention,” but in a special way that your mind isn’t used to. At any given moment your mind is paying attention to things that have nothing to do with the present moment.

What’s useful about this list is that it tells you in simple terms what mindfulness is not. Instead of struggling to be mindful, it’s easier to stop doing the opposite. When you notice that your mind is engaging in any activity that pulls you out of the present moment, simply stop. Don’t evaluate or analyze. Don’t accuse yourself of something wrong. By simply observing what’s going on and letting it come to a stop, you have entered the domain of mindfulness. 

Many people have never experienced their minds at rest. Reading through the list above, they would say, “But that’s what my mind is for. That’s who I am.” No, you do not exist to support the activity of the mind. The mind exists to support you. One of the best ways it can do so is by allowing you to experience reality, not the fluctuating reality of the material world but the changeless reality untouched by time. 

Other people are able to experience a few moments of restfulness in their minds, perhaps by focusing or meditating on their breath, or on a mantra, but almost immediately the old restless mind activity returns. What then? Move into the mode of simple attention. There are many areas of life to be mindful of besides the buzzing activity of the mind. You can be mindful of your emotions, your breath, or the sensations in your body. You can be aware of the sounds in your surroundings. 

The way you move your body—sitting, walking, eating, or any other activity —can be the object of your mindfulness. It’s important not to try or use effort. Anything you draw your attention to will bring you into the present moment, giving you the experience of presence. When you are in the proximity of a holy person, for example, you experience divinity that is actually rooted in something much simpler: it comes from being present. Being present is enough to bestow calm and a subtle feeling of safety, love, and joy. 

We often miss this experience in our own lives, because as soon as we have a thought or sensation, we start to evaluate and analyze it. When we do so the present disappears and takes presence with it. Being present and experiencing presence are the same, and neither one requires effort. You cannot work to be present. You just are. If you practice mindfulness, this quality of joyful presence will begin to be with you all the time. If you find yourself getting distracted, just noticing that you are distracted will bring you back to the present. 

The kind of mindfulness I am talking about has nothing to do with emptiness or checking out. It doesn’t require concentration or intensity. It is the most relaxed and natural state because nothing is more relaxed than yourself. You can slip into it simply by noticing each distracting activity and letting it go. “Easy come, easy go” actually has a deep spiritual meaning. What comes and goes isn’t the real you. The real you is the bliss that exists beyond time.

 Take this to yourself
I will embrace what is, and not impose upon it what was or what could be. What is brings me into the present moment. It sheds worry and anticipation. By focusing only on what is before me, I am in a new mindset that is far more relaxed and accepting. I am allowing my own being to be present. In this way, I experience the fullness of divine presence. 

I will catch myself whenever I am distracted. I am not the restless activity of the mind. I am not the story my mind is constantly telling me. I am not my memories or my dreams of the future. I am the point of stillness, now and evermore. As soon as I stop being distracted, I am being mindful. Now I can pay attention to the present moment and the fullness it contains. 

I will separate the present moment from the present situation. Every situation rises and subsides. Things change, but I remain. If a stressful situation continues, I will find a quiet place to gather myself. If that isn’t possible, I promise to walk away at the first opportunity. This is the practical value of mindfulness. It reminds me that my primary aim in life is to be present with my true self. Only then can I appreciate what is.
Author: Bilisa Negash