by A H Almaas
The truth is that our True Nature is similar to the nature of light, which is timeless and which we can experience in the moment as the now-ness of the moment. But if we are oriented toward the future, we are not allowing ourselves to be where we are, which is now, and we are also leaving, dissociating from, the moment. Our nature is light, pure now-ness, so to operate from the perspective of a future that can get better or worse means that we are dissociating ourselves from our True Nature. How am I going to be myself if I do that? How am I going to be where I am?
In other words, the orientation of hope—hoping for something in the future—disconnects you from who you really are. The orientation of expectation or of having a goal to accomplish does the same thing. For example, you may be thinking that one of these days, you are going to be enlightened, so you are working at it now. Light would never think that way; it doesn’t posit an end state in which everything is going to be wonderful, and it doesn’t say that we have to practice now in order to get to that goal. For light, that is completely nonsensical; there is just now. Now is just wonderful the way it is, and now is all that we have.
If there is future in our life, it is true that we need to consider it for the sake of practical matters. When you are doing your budgeting or choosing insurance policies or making travel arrangements, you will have to include the future in your planning. But what does that have to do with your experience of yourself in the moment? Your experience in the moment is your own consciousness, which is a fluid body of light. Why can’t you experience that even as you are planning?
The way we relate to facing the experience of death is an important example of what I am talking about. If you are totally in the moment when death comes, it won’t be a terrible thing. It is true that it will be a shock to the system, but the fear that most people in our culture have about death is about more than that. It is our fear of being totally in the moment, any moment—without past or future—that makes us afraid to face the particular moment that we call death. Death is a moment with no future. Likewise, it is the fear of physical death that makes us afraid to be completely present in each moment. Why is that? Because totally letting go of the past and the future is a death of the familiar self. In other words, being completely in the moment makes us fear death because we think that no time means death—we associate the passage of time with life and being alive.
EXPERIENCING NOW-NESS
But remember that you are the presence, the now-ness that is here, and that now-ness is your now-ness. You don’t need to depart from now-ness to be able to go wherever you are going—in the next minute, or tomorrow afternoon, or wherever you will be after your physical death.
So we are pointing here toward the recognition of the timelessness, or the now-ness, of our True Nature. Presence means that something is in the present, but not just in the sense of being there in present time. Look around you. Whatever you see is in the present—your chair is in the present, your body is in the present, the walls are in the present. But the presence in the present is not just the fact of those things being there, it is the very now-ness of the presence in the present; it is the very experience of now-ness.
How do you experience now? How do you get a taste, a flavor, of now? This flavor, this texture of the now, is the immediacy of the experience of awareness, consciousness, presence. It is like trying to find out what fluid light is made of. It is made out of now, out of now-ness. It is an unchanging, condensed now, a full, indestructible now. It is a now that is at all times, for it is the now that is the present of all times—past, present, and future. And it doesn’t change from an instant in the past to an instant in the future. It is the same now—always fresh. Time doesn’t have an impact on the now.
What is useful to recognize, then, is that our time orientation will disconnect us from our True Nature because it contradicts the now-ness, the timelessness, of our True Nature. It is paradoxical, of course, to think about things that way because we are always thinking in terms of time. The time axis is very important for the mind. The mind is always thinking of things in the past and of what it is going to do in the future. It rarely settles in the moment. If it did, it would become quiet.
When you settle into the moment, you realize that there is not much happening—a few things here and there. The primary awareness is of the immediacy of the moment. This is because presence—being in the now—is characterized by beingness, simply being here now. In contrast, our familiar self is based on doing, going, making things happen. We do not trust that action can arise and proceed from inner stillness; we do not recognize that Being is the ground of everything. To be in the now connects you with that quiet beingness that underlies all changes, all activity—the simple hereness where what is most basic is not activity but presence.
So when we are not settled, all the images, all the reifications, all the projections from the past arise and influence the present. We don’t see the present as the present; and we don’t experience the presence of the present.
MISSING THE NOW-NESS IN THE PRESENT
That same influence of the past also keeps orienting us toward the future. Something will come up from the past that we are not happy about, and in our desire for things to be better in the future, we disconnect ourselves from the moment. We miss the now. And when we miss the now, we don’t just waste time, we miss the now-ness of what we are, the realness, the here-ness—the very fact that we are.
When people talk about being in the here and now, it is a more profound experience than simply being aware of the content of the experience of the moment. It begins with that awareness because the content of the moment is what is arising now. So, we are aware of the content of the moment—the physical attributes, the feelings, and the thoughts that are arising in the moment. But the more we are attuned to what is arising in the moment, the more time slows down as we become more present to the moment. And when we become more present to the moment, we begin to recognize the now-ness itself, which turns out to be the presence that is present to the moment.
So, my presence is the now-ness of the moment; they are not separate. It is not that my presence is present in the now of the moment; the presence is the now of the moment. That is how we actually know what presence is. In the practice of being where we are, it becomes clear that to be ourselves, to be real, we need to be in the present moment. We need to attend to the moment, we need to embrace and be completely aware, immediately in touch, with the moment. This immediate in-touchness with the moment is the in-touchness with the now-ness of the moment, which is the same thing as the Being of our presence.
CAUGHT IN THE FLOW OF TIME
In some sense, all the obstacles to being ourselves that we have observed and explored so far are basically in time; they are a function of the passage of time perceived in the linear sense. They come from the past and move into the future. If our center of consciousness is operating within a linear time framework—in the passage from the past to the future—it will be engaged in these obstacles. Our judgments and rejections and hopes and desires and expectations all happen in time. Even our inner practice becomes a practice in time. We are going from one point of time to another for a process that has a beginning and an end. There is a cause and a result: something we do now will result in a change in the future. That kind of time orientation will dislocate us, will take us outside the presence of what we are and into the ephemeral mental world of time, which is where most people live.
People are living in the bardo—in the passage, in the transitional. That is what the bardo really is: continuous transitioning from one thing to another, which is the product of the experience of a time-bound mind. So, when we say to be present and to be aware of where we are, we simply mean to attend to the moment, to be in the moment, to be here, to be now, to be aware of what is happening right this moment.
Even if I am remembering and reliving something that happened to me in my childhood, I can do that in the moment. In fact, the more I am in the moment, the mo
re real, the more alive, that reliving is. If I relive an incident in my mind, it is more like a thought, a memory; but if I am really in my body, in my sensations, in my presence, in the immediacy, I am in a sense experiencing the now-ness of that past because I am in the now-ness now. But it is the same now-ness.
Remember that light from a distant star is not moving in time; that is, no passage of time is involved in its journey. As we are seeing it, it is the same light that was there billions of years ago. It hasn’t aged a minute, even a second. It is always now, and in this now-ness we can experience the past as much as we like—fully, completely—and really process it. Because that is true reliving; it is not just remembering. But we have to be in the moment, we have to be in touch with our presence.
This is one reason the practice of presence is often referred to as self-remembering, or simply as remembering. We do not mean remembering in the ordinary, cerebral way that memory usually functions. We mean the remembering of our presence, remembering it in the sense of reliving the presence—which is reliving the now, which is the now of the present moment. In other words, self-remembering works as a practice of presence if and when we can do it in this fullness of being in the now, in the full experience of true reliving.
PAST, FUTURE, AND PRESENCE
Thus far in our considerations, we have seen how our past knowledge—what I call learned ignorance—impinges on our experience by mentally overlaying the past on the present. This affects both the central component of our present experience—what we have called the primary manifestation—and the reactions, associations, and judgments about that central component—what we have called the secondary manifestations. If we look at learned ignorance in terms of these two manifestations, we see that the primary component is mainly bound by the past. The secondary components, although controlled by the past, are usually oriented toward accomplishing something or going someplace in the future: “No, I don’t like this; I want it that way” or “I like this, and I am going to get it” or “I am afraid that I won’t be happy with how this turns out” or “Let’s work on this so it will change.” All the rejection and the comparison we engage in imply a future orientation, a hope for something different or fear of a bad result. So although primary and secondary manifestations are both involved with past and future, the primary tends to be mostly dominated by the past and the secondary are dominated by the future.
Most commonly, what we identify with is our future orientation. And that is why we keep our attention on the secondary manifestations of our experience. The primary component of our experience often doesn’t even have a chance to impact us, much less the actual reality of presence at the heart of it.
Think about it. You still believe that you know there is going to be a tomorrow and that expectation becomes a controlling aspect of your experience. Perhaps you have an appointment tomorrow, so you do need to consider the future in that sense. But that is not the same thing as your consciousness levitating out of the now and jumping to the future.
We don’t need to do that in order to be efficient. We can still reside in the present, enjoying the moment—because really, that is all that we have. The future might never come—who knows? So just like anything else that may arise in our experience, we don’t have to go along with our future orientation. When we notice it coming up, we don’t have to believe it, we don’t have to take it seriously, we don’t have to identify with it.
But not identifying doesn’t mean pushing away. Instead, we can recognize, “Who I truly am is a being of light.” When we know this, we don’t get caught up in all the obstacles we encounter. Not because we are avoiding them or denying them or pushing them away, but because those obstacles actually don’t exist for beings of light. For a being of light, what you are right this very moment is all you have. It is in the presence of this moment, and only in the presence of this moment, that we can be where we are, that we can be ourselves, that we can be real. It is as simple as that.
EXPLORATION SESSION
The Influence of Future Thinking on Your Experience
We have worked a lot so far on the influence of the past, so here the focus is more on your future orientation. This inquiry is to explore the particular way your mind dissociates you from the presence of this moment by looking toward the future.
Be aware that future orientation happens when you engage in any of the following activities: hoping for something, expecting an outcome, fearing that something might happen, planning for the future, having a goal, anticipating accomplishment, or seeking pleasure.
Spend about fifteen minutes observing and following your present experience. Notice what happens to your experience of the present moment. Does a future orientation arise? If so, how does that affect your presence now and how does it affect your experience? What relevance does the future have to yourself as a being of light?
CHAPTER 14
A Mercurial Sense of Self
AFTER ALL THE EXPLORATIONS you have done thus far of the obstacles to being who you are and where you are, you may be feeling more relaxed and content just being yourself. Perhaps you have succeeded in your practice for some time and are able to let yourself be more settled and present in the now. After letting go of some of the strain and effort to be something or to attain a goal, you might even be experiencing a kind of vacation!
But that state rarely remains for long. Before you know it, it starts to slip away. Whenever this happens, the tendency is to become alarmed: “Uh-oh, I’ve lost it! I have to find where I am again . . . and it’s going to take me a while to find myself.” We’re right back in time, and we can easily get caught in trying to preserve where we are, trying to keep everything in place, trying to keep things the same. Even though we have learned much about not attempting to change ourselves, and we understand better the importance of not trying to modify our experience, we can end up struggling against change. Why? Because if we like where we are, we want to hold on to it. So what do we need to understand about the nature of reality and about ourselves that will help us with this dilemma?
You can observe through your own experience that the details within manifestation are always moving, always changing, always flowing. In fact, they are quite slippery. The weather changes, who we come in contact with changes, the conditions in the world are always changing, and so on. But not only does our environment change, we ourselves are also in constant change. Simply because we move, for example, our perception changes. And as we know from our experience, our feelings are changing all the time. Thus, our internal and external realities are in a constant state of flux. If you consider this, the question naturally arises: If everything is changing, what does it mean to be where we are?
In this chapter, we want to bring into focus a property of experience that is always there—the fact of change. This constant change is a natural, universal law. All experience and perception imply change. If there is no change, there is simply no experience. The phenomenon of constant change is part of awareness, is part of consciousness, is part of life.
What does that tell us about what it means to be ourselves? What we will discover is that because everything keeps changing and change is a constant, to be where we are means always leaving where we were. This does not mean leaving in the sense of dissociation or becoming disconnected from ourselves, but leaving where we were in order to be with the constantly changing reality of our experience in the moment.
OUR RESISTANCE TO CHANGE
This fact of continuous change discloses something important about what it means to be where we are and also reveals to us a particular obstacle to being where we are. Consider the following example: You have a certain experience and recognize, “I am feeling frustration about this,” or “Oh, I’m actually afraid of this.” Then you say, “Good—now I know where I am, so I will stay here and explore it.” So you do that and have an experience of knowing yourself. But remember the tendency for reification and identification. We almost always reify what we find out about o
urselves; we make it into a something and identify with it. And what does identification imply? An attempt to keep things the same.
We have many reasons for trying to keep our experience from changing. We just don’t want to lose what we like about what we are experiencing, what we have, what we know about ourselves, or what we take to be reality. When we begin to do inner work, we have a certain view of reality and who we think we are. After some investigation, inquiry, and practice, we form a different view and can learn to abide in that, but there are no guarantees that things are going to stay that way. Our reality changes in so many unexpected ways and directions that the next moment could be, and often is, different.
Change is difficult for the ego. Ego wants stability, sameness. We believe that our sense of self cannot find or keep its mooring if things keep shifting. But the fact is that reality is always a shifting ground. And our consciousness, our awareness, is more like mercury—very slippery, very fluid, easily changing and flowing.
So when we talk about remaining where we are, it does not mean that we remain static; it implies being at ease with the continual transformation of where we are. Our tendency is to want to stay the same and have our experience remain the same, especially when we like it. And that becomes a rigidity in our consciousness, an inflexibility that is not natural. How can we approach this situation and understand what is at work here?
THE ATTEMPT TO PRESERVE
We have looked at many of the ways we try to change our experience to improve it, to make it better, or to direct it toward a particular goal. Our attempt to change things to be a certain way is a primary obstacle to just being where we are. But the opposite is also true. The attempt to preserve is as much an obstacle to being where we are as the attempt to change.
Each time we try to change something in our experience, we are also trying to preserve something else. For instance, whenever we are trying to improve our experience, we are preserving a certain ideal or goal. By shaping our experience to be a particular way instead of letting it unfold the way it wants to, we are really trying to maintain a certain image of ourselves, an identity that we don’t want to change.