Fully here, fully now
“Life is wonderful when you can really live it, as animals do, when only the present instant counts.”
So said Bernard Moitessier in his book The Long Way.
Moitessier, the first man to sail solo and non-stop around the world, was referring to the age old concept that only the present moment is real, whereas the past and the future do not exist, which is why so many spiritual teachers advise us to live in the here and now.
I had come across this idea many times over the years, but it was not until I read Eckhardt Tolle’s book The Power of Now that the lightbulb suddenly flashed on and the simple meaning and truth of it became obvious to me.
Essentially, the past is time that no longer exists, it’s just memories. The future hasn’t happened yet therefore it’s nothing but projection and fantasy. But this present moment is actually happening now and therefore by definition it must be real.
By the same token, the only place that’s real is here because you can’t be anywhere else. You might be in New York, Dubai or Tokyo. Wherever you are is your particular here at this moment. Just to clarify, if I come to meet you in Alaska and you ask me where I am, I say “I’m here.” I cannot possibly be in more than one place at a time.
What is the significance of this?
If you can live in the here and now, which most of us find much easier said than done, you can feel fully alive, for everything is real. Your negative stuff such as anxiety, fear and anger, which spring from mental constructs and are therefore imaginary, simply melt away and you find yourself being able to properly enjoy the miracle that is you, your life and the life of everything and everyone around you. You actually experience everything as it really is.
But how to achieve such a state of being? There are two ways that I can think of. The first is meditation.
When you first enter a state of silent meditation, for example, you will almost certainly be bombarded by a jumble or a never-ending stream of thoughts and feelings, and some of them might not be so pretty. Our natural reaction, because of our Western upbringing, is to judge everything. Good, bad, positive, negative, lovely, horrible, beautiful, ugly, prideworthy, shameful, whatever.
But if, as we meditate, we cultivate the habit of being an objective witness to these thoughts and feelings, we can come to a place of acceptance and ultimately inner peace. You drop your attachments to your history, you don’t feed hopes and fears about the future, you are simply here and now, a witness, in a place of peace and acceptance.
The other way is to do what you love. It could be anything. For me it’s writing, coaching, woodwork and sailing, for you it might be knitting or mountaineering. The important thing is to enter wholeheartedly into whatever you are doing. It has to be an affair of the heart. Remember as you cling to that rock face your very life depends on your absolute focus and concentration, and I assure you concerns about the past and future will melt away and you will find yourself completely here, completely now. You become one of life’s participants, no longer a spectator, and you will feel a whole lot better as a result.
