The Power of Now

[Pooka]

LJ if you want to watch What the Bleep do We Know... I think I still have a copy somewhere... I'd be happy to send it... it is a bit hokey at times, but makes some useful points. Let me know and I'll pop it in the mail to you.

[lumberjim]

just listen. don't stare at the screen.

[lumberjim]

this is part 2, but the first 3/4 of part 1 is a some old lady with a guitar, and a brief intro. He begins this clip talking about HOW to be present at the venue he is speaking in.
hang in there, it takes him a while to get going...

[lumberjim]

I found the text version ofThe Power of Now on pfd

[HungLikeJesus]

Personal Flotation Device?

[Cloud]

LJ, you amaze me, sometimes. in a good way.

[Pico and ME]

He has a wonderful way with free association, doesn't he.

Edit: Oops, I thought you meant HLJ.

[casimendocina]

Originally Posted by Pico and ME

He has a wonderful way with free association, doesn't he.

Edit: Oops, I thought you meant HLJ.

I've got the monopoly on that. I call it linking.

[Pico and ME]

Lol...I call it surfing.

[skysidhe]

He hurts my pain body.

Just kidding.

I browsed his online book once. He makes some good points. I am glad he is helping you.

[Griff]

He really has a good synthesis of a lot of spiritual thought. I liked this especially:
The reason why some people love to engage in dangerous activities, such as mountain climbing, car racing, and so on, although they may not be aware of it, is that it forces them into the Now -- that intensely alive state that is free of time, free of problems, free of thinking, free of the burden of the personality.
This really resonates with me. I've often felt compelled to escape into this sort of activity. When you find the flow there is such quietude. I sometimes wondered if I was somehow self-destructive but this is a better interpretation. Downhill skiing, mountain biking, and fencing have all provided unmeasured time of absolute stillness. It can also be found putting a chisel to wood or sitting, but that is much much harder. This is the peace we find without a church growing our "pain body". He may be a kook but he is a kook for the good.

[lumberjim]

Salvation is not elsewhere in place or time. It is here and now.

What does that statement mean, "salvation is here and now"? I don't understand it. I don't even know what salvation means.

Most people pursue physical pleasures or various forms of psychological gratification because they believe that those things will make them happy or free them from a feeling of fear or lack. Happiness may be perceived as a heightened sense of aliveness attained through physical pleasure, or a more secure and more complete sense of self attained through some form of psychological gratification. This is the search for salvation from a state of unsatisfactoriness or insufficiency. Invariably, any satisfaction that they obtain is short-lived, so the condition of satisfaction or fulfillment is usually projected once again onto an imaginary point away from the here and now. "When I obtain this or am free of that - then I will be okay." This is the unconscious mind-set that creates the illusion of salvation in the future.
True salvation is fulfillment, peace, life in all its fullness. It is to be who you are, to feel within you the good that has no opposite, the joy of Being that depends on nothing outside itself. It is felt not as a passing experience but as an abiding presence. In theistic language, it is to "know God" - not as something outside you but as your own innermost essence. True salvation is to know yourself as an inseparable part of the timeless and formless One Life from which all that exists derives its being.

True salvation is a state of freedom - from fear, from suffering, from a perceived state of lack and insufficiency and therefore from all wanting, needing, grasping, and clinging. It is freedom from compulsive thinking, from negativity, and above all from past and future as a psychological need. Your mind is telling you that you cannot get there from here. Something needs to happen, or you need to become this or that before you can be free and fulfilled. It is saying, in fact, that you need time - that you need to find, sort out, do, achieve, acquire, become, or understand something before you can be free or complete. You see time as the means to salvation, whereas in truth it is the greatest obstacle to salvation. You think that you can't get there from where and who you are at this moment because you are not yet complete or good enough, but the truth is that here and now is the only point from where you can get there. You "get' there by realizing that you are there already. You find God the moment you realize that you don't need to seek God. So there is no only way to salvation: Any condition can be used, but no particular condition is needed. However, there is only one point of access: the Now.

[lumberjim]

END THE DELUSION OF TIME
It seems almost impossible to disidentify from the mind. We are all immersed in it. How do you teach a fish to fly?
Here is the key. End the delusion of time. Time and mind are inseparable. Remove time from the mind and it stops - unless you choose to use it.
To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation. This creates an endless preoccupation with past and future and an unwillingness to honor and acknowledge the present moment and allow it to be. The compulsion arises because the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions.
But without a sense of time, how would we function in this world? There would be no goals to strive toward anymore. I wouldn't even know who I am, because my past makes me who I am today. I think time is something very precious, and we need to learn to use it wisely rather than waste it.

Time isn't precious at all, because it is an illusion. What you perceive as precious is not time but the one point that is out of time: the Now. That is precious indeed. The more you are focused on time - past and future - the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is.

Why is it the most precious thing? Firstly, because it is the only thing. It's all there is. The eternal present is the space within which your whole life unfolds, the one factor that remains constant. Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be. Secondly, the Now is the only point that can take you beyond the limited confines of the mind. It is your only point of access into the timeless and formless realm of Being.
§
NOTHING EXISTS OUTSIDE THE NOW
'Aren't past and future just as real, sometimes even more real, than the present? After all, the past determines who we are, as well as how we perceive and behave in the present. And our future goals determine which actions we take in the present.'

You haven't yet grasped the essence of what I am saying because you are trying to understand it mentally. The mind cannot understand this. Only you can. Please just listen.
Have you ever experienced, done, thought, or felt anything outside the Now? Do you think you ever will? Is it possible for anything to happen or be outside the Now? The answer is obvious, is it not?
Nothing ever happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now. What you think of as the past is a memory trace, stored in the mind, of a former Now. When you remember the past, you reactivate a memory trace - and you do so now. The future is an imagined Now, a projection of the mind. When the future comes, it comes as the Now. When you think about the future, you do it now. Past and future obviously have no reality of their own. Just as the moon has no light of its own, but can only reflect the light of the sun, so are past and future only pale reflections of the light, power, and reality of the eternal present. Their reality is "borrowed" from the Now.
The essence of what I am saying here cannot be understood by the mind. The moment you grasp it, there is a shift in consciousness from mind to Being, from time to presence. Suddenly, everything feels alive, radiates energy, emanates Being.

[xoxoxoBruce]

The now is perfectly fine for the hermit, but being aware of time is necessary to mesh with others, with society. Who hasn't said I was so intrigued/entertained/engrossed I lost track of time. Fun for you but annoying to people relying on you, or to yourself if there's other things you want to accomplish.

OK, all that was the train of though responding to the word Time.
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The word Now, as live in the now, do it now, is plastic, always in context.

Don't wait until you're 60 to start saving for retirement, do it now.
If we don't leave now, we'll be late for the curtain.
Rather than trimming those bushes in the fall, I should do it now.

Those are three distinctly different nows, and that muddies the issue.

[lumberjim]

They are not different. All 3 examples you gave could be stated substituting the word, immediately.

Of course you will leave now. All action takes place now. You may be misaligned with clock time, and be early or late to a meeting that was planned for a particular time, but when you arrive, it will be now.

Which speaks to the first section of your reply. Clock time is a useful thing. It's different than psychological time. I have to leave here at 10 am today to be on time. But if I sat here imagining what it will be like to get ready and go the whole time, then I would be missing.... Not be present... In all that now between.

Feel me?