So people say things like “The Future is Now” or “The Past and Future are Illusions” or “The Now Moment is the only moment that exists.” And yet this can still seem kinda out there, y’know? It doesn’t really make sense. While we may say those things and hear others say it, it may not fully resonate with the very core of our being, in every fiber of our body. There may still be an element of “I understand that you’re saying that everything exists now, but I’m still experiencing past and future!”
Instead of trying to see timelessness from the perspective of time, let’s see how timelessness sees time. Let’s see if we can bring some clarity to the idea that “Everything Exists Now.”
Noticing all the various spiritual points of view like the absolute and the relative, the individual, the one, the infinite, and so on.. we may find that these actually wind up being ways to divide up ISness, pure being. In this video, we explore this topic as we point towards what IS behind all these ways of speaking about what is:
In the mind we may have this idea of finally arriving somewhere, being done, and achieving a sense of completion, whatever that means to us… but that sense of lasting and ultimate completion can never actually be achieved in this world.
Let’s look at this from both the perspective of the relative and the perspective of the absolute and see why this is the case.
Consider this: From the linear perspective of time, with your five senses you can not perceive what is actually arising in the present moment. It’s technically impossible.
Everything you’re seeing happened a fraction of a second ago or more. It takes time for light to travel from what you’re looking at to your eyes. Thus, you are not actually seeing the present, but the past. You’re seeing something as it existed some time ago.
When you look up in the sky at the sun, you’re not looking at where the sun is now, but where the sun was 8 minutes ago. When you look up at the stars at night, you’re not looking in the direction of where the stars are now (if they even still exist and haven’t exploded since), but where they were hundreds, thousands, or even millions of years ago!
The same applies for sound. It takes time for sound to travel through the air and vibrate your ear drums. So again, you are not perceiving the present, but the past.
What about taste and touch? Perhaps they’re different because in order to experience those senses, you have to be in physical contact with the object. Thus there’s no delay as the vibration travels through space to your body.
Well, it takes time for the nerve’s impulses to travel through your body to your brain so that they may be perceived by the mind. This process too takes time.
To recognize this more clearly, why is it that when you touch a hot stove, you almost instantly pull your hand back? That’s right. Reflexes. Your body knows to pull your hand away before the signal makes it up to your brain, is processed as pain and danger, and the brain then sends a signal back to your arm to pull your hand away. Thanks to our reflexes, physical responses can happen even before mental perception.
Perception takes time. What we perceive is actually the past. You can not perceive the present moment with your physical senses. It’s physically impossible.
Perceiving in Time and Space
With your senses, you’re clearly not perceiving the entire universe at once. It’s like you’re only perceiving a tiny fraction of all of time and space at a time.
What you perceive at any moment depends both on where you are and when you are there.
If you change when you are in a particular location or space, what you perceive in that space changes. You can’t just be in the right place, but you have to be at the right place at the right time.
Similarly, if you change where you are physically relative to any object, what you experience about that object at any point in time will be different. For example, if you’re far away from a loud noise, you’ll hear it later in time than if you were really close to it. Thus, when you experience something totally depends on where you are in space.
Time and space are inseparable. They truly depend on one another. This is why people call physical reality a time/space reality or refer to time more accurately as spacetime. You can’t have one without another.
What you are perceiving at any particular moment in time is not actually what is arising in the present, but your own version of the universe, depending on where in time and space you happen to exist at any moment. It’s almost like being in your own little world!
Thus, if you want to experience the Now as it is in its pure and undistorted essence, if you want to see Reality as it actually is, a deeper part of yourself must be awakened, a part of you that exists beyond time and space. It is what is Here and Now.
Awareness, Here and Now
As long as we approach the the Present moment through the content that arises in the present, we will always perceive the past. We won’t be experiencing the Now.
Even if we think about the future, we’re looking at a thought that arose in the past, but we’re looking at it now. The looking happens now. What we are looking at happened in the past.
Let me repeat this because this is so important.
The looking happens now.
What we are looking at happened in the past.
As long as we look to experiences, memories, or perceptions, we’re not seeing the Now itself, but rather the mind’s stuff that happened in the past. The mind exists in past and future, and yet awareness is seeing whatever it is seeing, right now.
The content was created in the past, but awareness is seeing it now.
Right now, Awareness is looking at these words, regardless of when they were typed or when they showed up on your computer screen.
Awareness is aware of this moment. There is a big difference between awareness which is aware, here and now, and the content and experiences that arise within awareness.
Awareness is present. Awareness is always present. It is impossible for awareness to not be present.
The only thing awareness can be aware of is what is, here and now.
It’s not something to think about. It’s not something to understand. Thinking and understanding are all more mind-stuff that arise within time, are subject to time, and exist simply as passing content within awareness.
All satori moments, glimpses into your true nature, sudden realizations, feelings of oneness or love.. they’re all experiences that arise within awareness. None of that is what you are. None of that is it.
Connecting with Who You Are
To connect with who and what you truly are, just be.
Be still.
Rest as awareness.
It sounds utterly simple, and it really is.
Just rest as the timeless awareness that is here and now, for that is what you already are anyways.
By looking consciousness straight in the eye, it will come to know itself clearly.
This remembrance, this reconnection to the I Am that I Am, this is the foundation of awakening.
Consciousness is peering into this world, but it is not of this world.
Awareness is like this witnessing presence that is looking through this body/mind, like a watcher of a movie looks at the screen of a movie and is immersed in the sounds and colors.
But awareness is completely independent of the movie.
Rest as awareness.
There is nothing to understand. There is nothing to figure out. Just simply be. Be who you really are. Be still. Be.
Presence. What is it? Is your conscious awareness something you have like your personality or your body?
There’s one common misunderstanding I’ve seen that says that there is a “me” who can be present or practice presence. Being present has a lot of value. To find even more value in presence, see if you think there is actually a “me” here who can be present. If so, investigate deeply for yourself and find who or what it is that can be present in the first place.
What is your story about yourself? Your name, your job, your history, the highs and lows of your life, the roles you play, what you enjoy doing, what kinds of trouble you got into as a little kid…
Go ahead and tell yourself the story about you.
[Pause for storytime.]
Now notice that everything that was said is simply thought arising Now. It’s thought that has been identified with as part of some sort of a “me.” It’s “my” story. Yet the story is not who you are. It’s just a collection of thoughts that exist within awareness.
Why Do We Tell Our Stories?
Our stories are told because we have a yearning that by telling them, we’ll get what we’re looking for.
We get to feel right and justified.
We enjoy hearing ourselves speak.
We enjoy the feeling of existence that, without incessant thought, the mind fears it would cease to exist.
We have the hope that if we can just fix the story and make the necessary changes, we’ll get what we want.
We feel safer because although we can’t control reality, we can control our mental version of reality, giving us the apparent feeling of control where we really have none.
It’s a game that can be played for lifetime after lifetime, and indeed it has been.
Stories can certainly be entertaining. They can be full of excitement or full of horror, encompassing the entire emotional spectrum, yet they are not the Truth of who and what we are. They are true in the limited sense that they describe our perception of experiences, but they are not true as the final Truth of our being.
Who we are is everpresent, eternal, and unchanging. We are the space in which the story arises.
The essence of your being can never be contained in thoughts or in words. If you dropped your story altogether, who would you be? What remains without the thoughts about “my story?”
Dropping Your Story
As long as you are telling your story, you can not experience the Truth. When you are experiencing the Truth, you can not continue telling your story.
It’s possible to see that a story is just a story and to stop following it as if it was something real. Our stories, however long we’ve been telling them and however many people have been telling them throughout our cultural history, they’re still just stories.
The key here is to simply stop following the story and stop feeding it with attention. This doesn’t mean to suppress or push against the story, to play the role of a “spiritual seeker” who has gotten rid of the story. Simply stop. Stop trying. Stop pushing. Withdraw awareness from the story naturally and find what’s left. What is here, now?
Can Presence ever be a story? Can Presence ever be a thought?
Have you ever noticed that, in retrospect, the right people, events, and circumstances synchronistically tend to show up at just the right time?
Looking back over the course of history, it often makes sense why things happen the way they do. Hindsight is 20/20, as they say.
As you raise your consciousness, something similar happens. It’s like your perspective also raises, giving you a clearer picture of everything around you. You become aware of more, able to see more of the “big picture,” in a sense.
The Big Picture
It is all connected. The appearance of random and seemingly disconnected events is the product of a limited perspective of consciousness. It’s all connected. After all, it must be, since it’s all One.
Everything that’s happening in the universe is perfect. Literally. All That Is unfolds in divine perfection. There are no mistakes. No accidents. Everything is happening absolutely perfectly.
Understanding this, we can become very excited, very appreciative, and very accepting of what arises in the Now. What could be more exciting than being in full alignment with who we are in the moment?
Since we’re very excited about what is happening, we’re never wanting to be anywhere else.
When we’re never waiting for anything else, we don’t even need the idea of patience.
When we no longer need patience, we’re no longer impatient.
Bada-bing bada-boom!
Total acceptance, love, oneness, and peace with the Now.
You Are Truly Loved features content designed to guide people towards enlightenment, unconditional love, and living a life of joy through Self-realization and proper application of the Law of Attraction.
So people say things like “The Future is Now” or “The Past and Future are Illusions” or “The Now Moment is the only moment that exists.” And yet this can still seem kinda out there, y’know? It doesn’t really make sense. While we may say those things and hear others say it, it may not fully resonate with the very core of our being, in every fiber of our body. There may still be an element of “I understand that you’re saying that everything exists now, but I’m still experiencing past and future!”
Consider this: From the linear perspective of time, with your five senses you can not perceive what is actually arising in the present moment. It’s technically impossible.
I feel like a proud new father seeing his first YouTube video baby going up online. 
What is your story about yourself? Your name, your job, your history, the highs and lows of your life, the roles you play, what you enjoy doing, what kinds of trouble you got into as a little kid…
