What’s this business of being in the Now?
Ram Dass said, “We are fascinated by the words, but where we meet is in the silence behind them.”
by Vic Shayne
author
The Self is a Belief: The idea that causes suffering
There is a gulf between an intellectual understanding versus a realization. An intellectual understanding is when you read all about Miami Beach and watch a lot of videos and attend lectures, and then say you know what Miami Beach is like. But a realization is when you visit Miami Beach, walk along the shore, feel the warmth and breeze, go into the Atlantic Ocean, and tour the area. What we see with matters of enlightenment, spirituality, and so on, is a lot of intellectual understanding with very little realization. And this brings us to the Now…
Much has been said about being in the present moment. It’s a popular thing to say: “Live in the now. Be in the now. Stay in the present. The power of Now.” Ram Dass’s book is entitled Be Here Now, and it’s been a worldwide bestseller since he wrote it in 1978. After spending some time with his beloved enlightened teacher Neem Karoli Baba, Harvard psychology professor Richard Alpert, PhD, became Ram Dass, guru for the masses. He never made claims of being enlightened, but he attended to his calling as a worldwide lecturer, teacher, meditation guru, and spreader of love and compassion. He faithfully kept with his guru’s message that change begins with oneself and that the egoic mind (sense of a personal self) is apt to mislead you and cause suffering.
Intellectual knowing or a realization?
The intellectual grasping of what the present moment means is not that difficult to achieve. It entails understanding that the mind is a very useful instrument. It has a memory, is able to create and destroy, can figure out problems and provide solutions, will remember where the car keys are (most of the time), recognizes familiar faces and places, and won’t forget your birthday. But when this same mind is conditioned by myriad psychological influences — parents, relatives, teachers, authority figures, religion, and so on — then the egoic self is developed. We can call this the “I,” “me,” the self, the egoic mind, the persona (Carl Jung’s term), and so forth.
This sense of a personal self exists only relation to the past or future. This is because the egoic mind is created out of an accretion of tightly held thoughts identified with the body and all of its experiences and relationships. And thoughts are always of the past. Thus, knowledge is also only of the past. Always. As such, the egoic mind is never fully present. It requires a sense of past and future to exist as an idea of who you are, and to form and concretize your relationships, likes and dislikes, goals, desires, fears, interests, and all the rest. It identifies with what already has occurred and it projects possibilities into the future. This egoic mind, even when trying to be altruistic, is always self-centered. But in the absolute “now,” there is no egoic mind (sense of self).
Focusing on the Now is distracting
The problem with all of this talking and teaching about the eternal Now is that it is no more than more mental stimulation, entertainment, and placation. The egoic mind is likely to become very proud of itself for figuring out the meaning of the Now and then making a self-aggrandizing claim about itself in its ability to grasp such an esoteric concept. The egoic mind is trainted to respond this way — it takes credit or blame for things, and it bounces back and forth between pleasure and trying to avoid pain. These actions and reactions are in ignorance of the present moment, but there is something more fundamental to consider.
Don’t start with the Now, start with your self
Being in the present moment is the effect of fully realizing what you are as not-this-mind, not-this-body. It is a side effect of self-enquiry. If you try to make being in the present your goal, as so many teachers suggest, then you will only end up exercising the very mind that you are trying to transcend. And this is where realization enters the picture. When you find the core of what you are NOT, then you have a realization that there is no past, present, future, phenomena, thought, or existence, because all of these are artifacts of the mind.
Before being here now, find out what you are by persistently observing your sense of self. Then, by a process of elimination, find out all of what you are NOT.
