The Unfolding Now

by A H Almaas

  Let’s say that a business partner you trusted just cheated you out of a lot of money. If you carry an ideal of being a forgiving person, you probably will make it a goal to forgive your partner. But what if your immediate reaction is anger and hurt, and you are not ready or don’t want to forgive that person? If you force yourself to do it without being with the experiences that are arising in you, you are not being where you are or who you are; you are trying to hold on to a self-image that is not you at this moment. It is true that you could reach a point where forgiveness is authentic, but you don’t need goals and ideals for that to happen. In fact, the insistence on maintaining the self-image of being a forgiving person is likely to delay or maybe even block the natural resolution of your feelings. If your True Nature includes forgiveness, eventually that is what will arise, on its own, when the issues and feelings around the incident are faced consciously.

  So we can put the brakes on and resist change, or we can try to direct it, and we probably do both things at different times. But we don’t have to fight with that or try to change that. We can just recognize our attachment and see how we are holding on to things so that they don’t change. That is all we need to know, because experience changes on its own. The practice, then, is once again to see where we are and be there. So everything we find ourselves doing—even our attempts to change or stay the same—is included in that. Everything is welcomed.

  PRESERVING OUR IDENTITY

  We can divide into two types the human tendency to hold on to the present in order to stay the same. The first type is the ego manifestation of trying to preserve a posture and identity. The second type is identification with and attachment to particular experiences. We will discuss each of these in some detail.

  In the first type, we might find ourselves in a situation where we want to feel better, or we might want our experience to feel freer and more positive—but that doesn’t mean we want to change who we are. We still want to preserve our identity as we know it. And even if we believe that we are open to our identity and our character structure changing, forces within us are trying to keep them the same.

  So ego experience inherently implies rigidity because we are identified with inner structures that are already defined and packaged. The fact that we are identifying with a self-image or an impression of ourselves or a pattern from the past means that we are repeating the same thing. We are not allowing space, we are not open for something different to arise. By holding on to that particular image, pattern, or way of relating, we are obstructing our own movement and unfoldment.

  We recognize that we are a certain kind of a person or that we are in a certain condition. And we notice that even when we want to change, even when we want to grow or we want to learn, it is not easy. We discover an inflexibility in our experience, a rigid boundary about what can and cannot change. Sometimes we can see that our experience is always changing, and we know that our body is changing and growing. But if we are honest, we have to admit that, in the midst of that change, we are always trying to hold on to something constant. We keep thinking more or less in the same way; even though our particular thoughts change from minute to minute, our repertoire is limited, and what we think about repeats over and over and over again.

  Everybody else would have been bored silly by now if they had to watch that same movie thousands of times. But we don’t get bored with it! The scenes have become our reality; they are what we are—and if the movie starts to change, alarms go off. We don’t want something different. We don’t even want a sequel! In fact, seeing the plot and the characters the same way so many times makes us feel secure. “Oh, this scene is happening again . . . yes, this is me . . . I recognize myself.” You are on familiar ground. The same issues arise—you feel hurt, or rejected, or small. You don’t like it, you complain about it, and go to therapy to work on it. But if one of these days you woke up without it, you would freak out. Who would you be then?

  It is as though we cannot exist without those unchanging parts of our experience or sense of self. And the inner activity, the inner posture, of holding on to that sense of who we are becomes an inflexibility, a rigidity. Other people can recognize that kind of rigidity in you, especially if it shows up as a characteristic or habit they don’t like. For example, if you are always late, friends may talk to you about it and want you to change. But, in many cases, it doesn’t change and you continue to be late. In fact, if you started being on time, it would be as though you had turned into somebody else.

  When the ego defines everything about who we are, we don’t have our hands off the situations of our lives; it is more like our hands are gripping them, holding them in a fixed position so they can’t change.

  Many of us cannot envision the possibility that our identity can actually change. It seems impossible to us that our experience can be so different that the person we have known ourselves to be becomes like a stranger. Can you imagine not even being able to relate to that person, finding it difficult to remember who you were—or how you used to feel?

  It is possible.

  A point does come during the inner journey when our transformation is so profound that we are unrecognizable to ourselves. It’s not that we don’t recognize what is happening; it’s that we realize that what is happening is not familiar. This can be disconcerting, but it is also freeing. We are no longer an extension of how we felt, what we did, how we behaved. Sometimes the change is so fundamental that we don’t just feel like a different person—we don’t remember ourselves as a person at all! We experience ourselves as just a mass of light that has taken the shape of a person for a while. There is an indescribable freedom when you can say, “I recognize my original nature . . . this timeless light.”

  But most of us are not able to go beyond our ego rigidity, which is an identification with and an attachment to the usual forms—our expressions of character, our types of experiencing, and the kinds of experience and capacities we have. That identification creates a lack of openness to the moment, because the moment can be anything and it can bring anything. Each moment is. The moment it has happened, it is gone, and another moment arises that might be similar—or it might be entirely different.

  So what is freedom? Freedom is, “I know that whatever happens in each moment is, and always will be, fine.” We are comfortable with whatever is, because we don’t have a rigid sense of what we are, who we are, what kind of experience is supposed to happen, or what is possible.

  What can we recognize, then, about our ego-created sense of self that limits our freedom to be ourselves and to live truly in the moment? The following is a list of things we know about our identity, which we are so attached to preserving:

  The ego sets structures in place that need to continue as they are so we can maintain our identity.

  We have always depended on our ego for our general sense of identity and self-image and for self-recognition, orientation, familiarity, and knowing how to function in the world.

  Our ego-created identity is an implicit constancy that we have become accustomed to.

  We think we need this identity to know who we are, to feel on familiar ground, to feel secure.

  This identity defines the ways we generally think and feel and includes momentary states that we identify with in a particular way, such as occasional flare-ups of anger that we feel guilty about afterward.

  Though we grow and transform in many ways, the basics that comprise our ego identity—how we think about things, our range of moods, how we do things, our preferences, the kinds of relationships and projections we have, and so on—tend not to fundamentally change.

  Even when we have significant realizations and insights, we tend to come back to the home base of who we take ourselves to be. Our identity coalesces back into the sameness of what we already know. And our experiences of realization become just little trips we have taken, rather than bringing a fundamental change in identity.

  ATTACHMENT

  The second category of resistance to
change is our attachment to our experiences. We can identify with any kind of experience, but we tend to get most attached to new experiences that we find pleasurable or freeing. Identifying with an experience means that we don’t want it to go away. We like it the way it is and will be disappointed if it changes to something else; we will feel it as a sense of loss. So we engage in subtle, or not so subtle, holding on—getting glued to the experience, trying to nail it down, trying to stop the unfolding of the moment in order to keep things as they are. Even when we are more open, even when we are experiencing our True Nature, we are not freed yet, we are not secure in the dynamic freedom inherent in being what we truly are.

  At the beginning of our journey, our experience is always changing, even when we are not in contact with presence or aware of Being. It is changing from one feeling to another, from one emotional state to another, from one thought to another, from one self-image to another, from one reaction to another. And when we explore our experience, inquire into it to become more present, that doesn’t mean our experience can or will stay still. We may slow it down to become more aware of it, but it will change.

  When we are further along in our practice and have experience of and contact with essential presence, we discover the natural dynamism of Being as that presence constantly changes as well. It might be a spaciousness one moment, and the next moment it could be pregnant light . . . then a flowing river . . . then a solid sense of presence . . . then a galactic condition. And all the while, there may be ego reactions around the presence that are also changing, such as fear, hope, resistance, or possessiveness.

  If we get to a point where we finally experience our essential worth and feel the solidity and steadfastness of it, we might get attached to that because we like it—it is new, and we are excited about it. We also can fall into expecting it to continue or wishing or hoping it will. However, if it continues in the same way, our learning will stop, our maturation will stop. True Nature does not remain in place like that; it is constantly disclosing, displaying its possibilities. It’s always revealing itself in other forms, deeper forms, subtler forms, more comprehensive forms.

  Even when we get to the nondual condition where everything is presence, nothing about that is static. Yes, it is always presence, but everything is flowing and unfolding, and that presence can be of so many colors and flavors. Presence sometimes becomes denser, sometimes lighter. And sometimes, the presence is not like presence at all but more of a nothingness or an absence. Our soul needs to have completely slippery hands so she is prevented from holding on to anything. Velcro is not a condition of realization!

  PRESERVING OUR CONCEPT OF TIME

  It is useful to notice how our attempts to preserve what we like and to change what we don’t like are generally wrapped up in our concept of time. All our concepts of change tend to be time bound. Why? Because time indicates change; it is basically a measurement of change. So if we are focused on creating change or on resisting change, we will be operating in time. We will be experiencing moving forward in time: going somewhere or trying not to go there. But we are not really going anywhere. The feeling that we are going someplace is always an illusion. It is just a way of experiencing things. In fact, all that is happening is that experience is changing.

  How can we understand this? As we discovered in the last chapter, time slows down the more we are being presence. When we are fully present in the presence, there is no time—no time passes. What does that mean in terms of our experience? Expressing this experience as “I am in timelessness, in the now; no time is passing for me” implies a still frame in which I am not moving. Does this mean that our experience doesn’t change? Does it mean that we don’t really have experiences and are just an unchanging blankness?

  These are common questions that arise when we start to explore the implications of timeless presence. We think that way because we cannot imagine how change can happen without the passage of time. It is as though time were a larger concept, a larger reality, within which things happen. In that schema, movement in space also means movement in time. If you go from one end of the room to the other, time will pass as that happens. This is how we experience and conceive of movement and change—as something that requires time to occur. So how could change be perceived without the passage of time? To answer this, we need to understand more about our True Nature as the presence of ever-fresh light.

  When I am my True Nature as a being of light, I am like a field, a presence, an effulgence. This doesn’t mean that I am like the steady bright light we experience coming from the sun. Our True Nature is not just a medium of light, a transparent, luminous presence. It is magical light—light that continues to be a light but is always changing. It changes its color, its shape, its density, its texture. It can actually take on the forms of emotions, thoughts, images, and sensations. This light that I am is always forming itself into one thing or another. And this forming itself into one thing or another I recognize as the various experiences that I have.

  If the light is sometimes a white light and sometimes a green light, we might think this means that first it was white and then it became green and therefore some time must have passed. But if we are in the light, if we are the light, the change from white to green is not from the past to the future. Transformation does not occur in a progression from the past to the present to the future, which is how we usually think of it and experience it.

  The change, instead, is more of an outflow: The forms just appear, they arise out of nowhere. The source of our experience is not the past as our mind understands it, but some mysterious immediacy of the moment. So the movement is from no form to the presence of form, from nothing to something, and it is instantaneous. Our eyes see a constancy of forms, but our actual experience is of an ever-fresh arising of those forms in an unfolding now. And perceived changes are simply the patterns in the outflowing of the forms.

  When we experience things as an outflow in this way—as consciousness continuously flowing out and bringing forth different forms of experience—then the sense of time is gone. There is no awareness of time passing. We feel that we are in the now, but the now is always manifesting itself in different ways. It is in constant transformation, even though it is the same. It is always the now and it is clearly the presence of the now, the constantly renewing light of True Nature. It is the timeless moment that is always transforming its form.

  When we don’t recognize light as being the medium, we just see the objects that arise. And when we see forms and notice that they change, we immediately bring in something we call time to account for the change. We say that something happened and then something else happened, and we see it as a series of events that is taking place in time. However, this is a substitute for recognizing how things actually happen, how things are constantly being displayed, how the light is always changing itself into various forms. And in that substitution, we miss the fact that this light, this awareness, this consciousness, pervades with immediacy all the forms and is aware of them.

  It is the nature of our True Nature to be not only a presence but a dynamic presence, a dynamism that is always disclosing its potential, revealing all the forms it can possibly be. True Nature is not a monolithic presence that stays the same; it is constantly transforming, always responding to what is going on. And it always continues to be True Nature.

  Sometimes we experience ourselves in a dimension of True Nature that is unchanging. But even though the ground of True Nature is unchanging, that ground is not separate from all that manifests in it, and all of those manifestations are constantly changing. True Nature is rich with possibilities; its potential is immense and it never ceases to disclose its treasures. It is always revealing its potential, displaying all the forms possible.

  We are learning here about the relationship of True Nature to the various manifestations. Part of our ignorance is in not understanding clearly what the relationship of True Nature is to everything else. Everything else is just a form that True Natu
re takes. Or you could say that True Nature manifests itself in its various forms. But it is still True Nature. So although it is always changing in its manifestations, we are not being something else. We are being ourselves. The ego creates a sense of being oneself as a fixed, unchanging self. True Nature doesn’t need that kind of stability.

  So even though we try to hold on to a particular form or a particular way of experiencing, ultimately it is not possible. When we do this, we are trying to stop the dynamism. We are trying to keep that fluid, slippery presence confined in a particular box, stopping it from being dynamic and doing its thing. In doing that, we disconnect from ourselves.

  To be where we are, then, we need to recognize the changeable, slippery, transforming, morphing quality of our Being and of reality. That means we have to recognize our attachments, our identifications, the ways we try to hold on, which requires appreciating what we have taken to be permanent features of reality. Have you ever thought about what things you believe to be permanent? For example, don’t you think that you are always going to be you? Almost everyone believes, “I can change, but it is always going to be me who is experiencing those changes.” We can’t imagine waking up one morning and discovering that somebody else is experiencing them!

  But if, instead of our usual self, we experience pure awareness as that which is experiencing things, it feels as though it is not us. That’s because we have been accustomed to experiencing everything through our usual self-identity. But now it is just experience happening without that usual self; it is just the light, and because that light is luminous, it is aware of what is happening.

  Recognizing this, we finally shed that which has always possessed us—we throw it off. We have been exorcised. We are freed from something that was imposed on us, that got into us and took over, that we introjected and identified with and thought was who we were. Now we are no longer identifying with anything; we are being ourselves.