Negativity And Suffering Have Their Roots In Time
Table of Contents
But the belief that the future will be better than the present is not always an illusion. The present can be dreadful, and things can get better in the future, and often they do.
Usually, the future is a replica of the past. Superficial changes are possible, but real transformation is rare and depends upon whether you can become present enough to dissolve the past by accessing the power of the Now.
What you perceive as future is an intrinsic part of your state of conscious. ness now. If your mind carries a heavy burden of past, you will experience more of the same. The past perpetuates itself through lack of presence.
The quality of your consciousness at this moment is what shapes the future — which, of course, can only be experienced as the Now.
You may win ten million dollars, but that kind of change is no more than skin deep. You would simply continue to act out the same conditioned patterns in more luxurious surroundings.
Humans have learned to split the atom. Instead of killing ten or twenty people with a wooden club, one person can now kill a million just by pushing a button. Is that real change?
If it is the quality of your consciousness at this moment that determines the future, then what is it that determines the quality of your consciousness? Your degree of presence.
So the only place where true change can occur and where the past can be dissolved is the Now.
All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry - all forms of fear — are caused by too much future, and not enough presence.
Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of nonforgive- ness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence. Most people find it difficult to believe that a state of con- sciousness totally free of all negativity is possible. And yet this is the liberated state to which all spiritual teachings point. It is the promise of salvation, not in an illusory future but right here and now.
You may find it hard to recognize that time is the cause of your suffering or your problems. You believe that they are caused by specific situations in your life, and seen from a conventional viewpoint, this is true. But until you have dealt with the basic problem-making dysfunction of the mind- its attachment to past and future and denial of the Now - problems are actually interchangeable. If all your prob- lems or perceived causes of suffering or unhappiness were miraculously removed for you today, but you had not become more present, more conscious, you would soon find yourself with a similar set of problems or causes of suffering, like a shadow that follows you wherever you go. Ultimately, there is only one problem: the time-bound mind itself.
I cannot believe that I could ever reach a point where I am completely free of my problems.
All Problems Are Illusions Of The Mind
It feels as if a heavy burden has been lifted. A sense of lightness. I feel clear… but my problems are still there waiting for me, aren’t they? They haven’t been solved. Am I not just temporarily evading them?
If you found yourself in paradise, it wouldn’t be long before your mind would say “yes, but….” Ultimately, this is not about solving your problems. It’s about realizing that there are no problems.
Only situations to be dealt with now, or to be left alone and accepted as part of the “isness” of the present moment until they change or can be dealt with. Problems are mind-made and need time to survive. They cannot survive in the actuality of the Now.
Focus your attention on the Now and tell me what problem you have at this moment.
sciously making it part of your sense of self. You become so overwhelmed by your life situation that you lose your sense of life, of Being. Or you are carrying in your mind the insane burden of a hundred things that you will or may have to do in the future instead of focusing your attention on the one thing that you can do now.
When you create a problem, you create pain. All it takes is a simple choice, a simple decision: no matter what happens, I will create no more pain for myself. I will create no more problems.
Although it is a simple choice, it is also very radical. You won’t make that choice unless you are truly fed up with suffer- ing, unless you have truly had enough. And you won’t be able to go through with it unless you access the power of the Now. If you create no more pain for yourself, then you create no more pain for others. You also no longer contaminate the beautiful Earth, your inner space, and the collective human psyche with the negativity of problem-making.
I am not getting any answer because it is impossible to have a problem when your attention is fully in the Now. A situa-
If you have ever been in a life-or-death emergency situation, you will know that it wasn’t a problem. The mind didn’t have
time to fool around and make it into a problem. In a true emergency, the mind stops; you become totally present in the Now, and something infinitely more powerful takes over. This is why there are many reports of ordinary people sud- denly becoming capable of incredibly courageous deeds. In any emergency, either you survive or you don’t. Either way, it is not a problem.
Some people get angry when they hear me say that prob. lems are illusions. I am threatening to take away their sense of who they are. They have invested much time in a false sense of self. For many years, they have uncon- sciously defined their whole identity in terms of their prob- lems or their suffering. Who would they be without it?
A great deal of what people say, think, or do is actually moti- vated by fear, which of course is always linked with having your focus on the future and being out of touch with the Now. As there are no problems in the Now, there is no fear either. Should a situation arise that you need to deal with now, your action will be clear and incisive if it arises out of present- moment awareness. It is also more likely to be effective. It will not be a reaction coming from the past conditioning of
The time-bound mode of consciousness is deeply embedded in the human psyche. But what we are doing here is part of a profound transformation that is taking place in the collective consciousness of the planet and beyond: the awakening of con- sciousness from the dream of matter, form, and separation. The ending of time. We are breaking mind patterns that have domi- nated human life for eons. Mind patterns that have created unimaginable suffering on a vast scale. I am not using the word evil. It is more helpful to call it unconsciousness or insanity.
This breaking up of the old mode of consciousness or rather unconsciousness: is it something we have to do or will it hap- pen anyway? I mean, is this change inevitable? That’s a question of perspective. The doing and the happen- ing is in fact a single process; because you are one with the totality of consciousness, you cannot separate the two. But there is no absolute guarantee that humans will make it. The process isn’t inevitable or automatic. Your cooperation is an essential part of it. However you look at it, it is a quan- tum leap in the evolution of consciousness, as well as our only chance of survival as a race.
your mind but an intuitive response to the situation. In other instances, when the time-bound mind would have reacted, you will find it more effective to do nothing — just stay cen- tered in the Now.
A QUANTUM LEAP IN THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS
I have had glimpses of this state of freedom from mind and time that you describe, but past and future are so overwhelm- ingly strong that I cannot keep them out for long.
The Joy Of Being
To alert you that you have allowed yourself to be taken over by psychological time, you can use a simple criterion. Ask yourself: Is there joy, ease, and lightness in what I am doing?
If there isn’t, then time is covering up the present moment, and life is perceived as a burden or a struggle.
If there is no joy, ease, or lightness in what you are doing, it does not necessarily mean that you need to change what you are doing.
It may be sufficient to change the how. “How” is always more important than “what.” See if you can give much more attention to the doing than to the result that you want to achieve through it.
Give your fullest attention to whatever the moment presents. This implies that you also completely accept what is, because you cannot give your full attention to something and at the same time resist it.
As soon as you honor the present moment, all unhappiness and struggle dissolve, and life begins to flow with joy and ease. When you act out of present-moment awareness, whatever you do becomes imbued with a sense of quality, care, and love - even the most simple action.
So do not be concerned with the fruit of your action - just give attention to the action itself.
The fruit will come of its own accord.
This is a powerful spiritual practice.
In the Bhagavad Gita, one of the oldest and most beautiful spiritual teachings in existence, nonattachment to the fruit of your action is called Karma Yoga.
- It is described as the path of “consecrated action.”
When the compulsive striving away from the Now ceases, the joy of Being flows into everything you do.
The moment your attention turns to the Now, you feel a presence, a stillness, a peace. You no longer depend on the future for fulfill- ment and satisfaction — you don’t look to it for salvation.
Therefore, you are not attached to the results. Neither fail- ure nor success has the power to change your inner state of Being. You have found the life underneath your life situation.
In the absence of psychological time, your sense of self is derived from Being, not from your personal past. Therefore, the psychological need to become anything other than who you are already is no longer there.
In the world, on the level of your life situation, you may indeed become wealthy, knowl- edgeable, successful, free of this or that, but in the deeper dimension of Being you are complete and whole now.
In that state of wholeness, would we still be able or willing to pursue external goals?
Of course, but you will not have illusory expectations that anything or anybody in the future will save you or make you happy. As far as your life situation is concerned, there may be things to be attained or acquired. That’s the world of form, of gain and loss. Yet on a deeper level you are already complete, and when you realize that, there is a playful, joyous energy behind what you do.
Being free of psychological time, you no longer pursue your goals with grim determina- tion, driven by fear, anger, discontent, or the need to become someone.
Nor will you remain inactive through fear of failure, which to the ego is loss of self. When your deeper sense of self is derived from Being, when you are free of “becoming” as a psychological need, neither your happiness nor your sense of self depends on the outcome, and so there is freedom from fear. You don’t seek permanency where it can- not be found: in the world of form, of gain and loss, birth and death.