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Myleene Klass- Musician and Broadcaster
“I find FreeMind really powerful and I recommend it for everyone but in prisons and schools it could be an absolute revolution.”
Mark Johnson, author of ‘Wasted’, adviser to Ministry of Justice and Guardian Columnist.
"We are in the middle of a retail downturn in usually our slowest month. A month after this training we have had our best month ever. What's more amazing is nothing was even mentioned about sales."
Managing Director of a chain of Health Stores "Zen Health and Beauty"
The problem with the “power of now”
20 August 2010
Lots of people have said lots of things about the importance of “staying in the now”. Many of those teachers and writers have been admirably trying to help people realise that their response to life is within their control. They have been trying to get people to realise that many of their fears are not worth worrying about. Their teachings are about letting go of your concerns and becoming aware of your present experience whereby you feel more relaxed and peaceful. I agree in principle with what these teachers have been trying to do but in practice I have some concerns. I do not know many people that are able to consistently remain in the “now”. What the power of now promises is a cure-all for all concerns, a way of bringing yourself into the moment where you can always be ‘alright’- a place from which everything can lose its meaning and its hold on your emotional state.
This is all great stuff but I believe embedded in this idea is a fairly major problem, which prevents people from actually experiencing the peace that they seek. No doubt people can use this idea, to bring their attention to their present experience and they can then bring objectivity, perspective, calm and all manner of other positive feelings into their experience. That is of course great but I feel it falls down because it is built on the idea that the “now” is somehow separate from everything else. Many of the teachers that extol the virtue of the “now” talk about the past and the future not really existing. They say that in the moment there is nothing else. I think these ideas are close to the truth but what they lack in accuracy brings the whole process and technique into question. I do not believe in the now. I believe in the ALL. It is not that the past and future do not exist. They of course exist, but not in the way we experience them. The past and the future are ever-present in the ongoing experience of the ALL. Every moment is every other moment that ever has or ever will, happen. There is no now, there is no then, there is no over there. If instead of focusing on this moment as being the ONLY thing worth concentrating on, you think of it in terms of it being EVERYTHING you will be connected to the ultimate perspective. The concept of the “now” is just another reduction, just another separation, another way of creating the illusion- of cutting something out of another thing and showing them to be different.
This thinking in philosophical terms is called duality and all the world’s best wisdom traditions all point to the dissolving of duality as being the best way to be peaceful. Note that I did not say find peace for when it comes to unity consciousness (the state of being beyond the illusion of duality) there is no ‘you’ that could either be looking for or able to find peace. In the state of unity consciousness or oneness there is nothing that you are not, all things are one and in that there is nothing that can harm you for you are all things that ever have been, you are in everything, of everything and without needing to go on a course and without needing to study; and without needing a guru, and without needing anything from outside of you, you can take a moment to close your eyes and feel that connection. Just close your eyes and soften your breathing and feel yourself as all things, feel the present as EVERYTHING and thus dissolve the idea of the now and think instead of this being the ALL. With that perspective you realise that what you previously thought of as ‘you’ is a dwarfed idea of your true nature. All enlightenment is about going beyond your small, separate and limited idea of yourself as nothing and realising (not connecting to, because the connection has never been severed) your large, connected unlimited sense of self as all things. That is the source of all love, all peace, all joy and the greatest ability to be un-phased by whatever is happening in your world because you are your world. All of the world’s riches already belong to you. That is the power of the ALL. The idea of the “now” can actually cut this vital connection in your perception. Your ‘now’ is another’s then, another’s there. The past and the future do not exist behind and in front of you, they are being expressed through you as a continuous experience of everything. There is no “now”. There is only ALL. Instead of choosing to narrow our perspective to the “now” where we can blinker ourselves from that which is disturbing us. That is not a permanent solution. I fear for many it is just a different way of burying your head in the sand- a sort of spiritual denial. If we can instead widen our perspective to the ALL then real freedom will be potentially be our everlasting experience. From there, there is no ‘you’ so what can possibly ever bother ‘you’ again?
The power of now will always fail to deliver lasting peace for it needs to be refreshed in every moment. The power of ALL is a perspective that includes every experience that has ever happened and will ever happen and with that connected clarity, ultimate peace will be the natural state of being. When that happens remember that it has not been created, it has not been found, it has not been added. Simply your perspective has aligned with that which was and always will be there, beyond moments and definitely beyond the “now”.