Stay in the NOW?
We all have heard the phrase of trying to stay in the NOW, right?
But what is the Now and can we actually stay in it?
We define that what is real has to be present in all three stages of consciousness, waking, sleeping and deep sleep. And if you are studying my book, you know that even in deep sleep, you as consciousness, are still there. The proof is that you don't die while you are in the deep sleep stage, but the mind is just empty of thoughts.
Only awareness/consciousness fits this description.
Awareness is your reality.
What are you trying to do, if your intention is to stay in the NOW?
Every thought is witnessed by you, and what is witnessed is already in the past. Awareness is witnessing a passing thought.
So this means you have to suppress thought. This is impossible. Maybe you can force yourself through intense concentration to maintain a thoughtless stage for a short time, but sooner or later the thought: Wow, this is really quite now, or some other thought arises. We confuse the thought of the present with another thought, that is an object as well. We can chase the present, but we will never get it.
We can have only one thought in our mind at the same time.
To find the NOW, is a bit like a soap bubble, as soon as we think we have it, it dissolves.
We cannot stop the dissolution of thought.
Why?
A thought is what we know.
All objects outside of us or even our internal objects, like thoughts and feelings are thoughts.
When a thought appears, there soon appears the idea that I had a thought. So the thinker and the thought, even though they are separated, are giving the same reality.
There actually is no thinker that is thinking a thought.
In western Philosophy there was a great breakthrough when Descartes so famously said: "I think, therefore I am."
In this statement, he turned our attention from the object to us, the subject. But he did not realize that being was not known through thought. It is rather the other way round, being, the Self, Us, contains the thinker and the thought. So we cannot be either.
There cannot be a thinker independent of thought.
I often use the well-known example of the ocean and the waves. The ocean and the waves are both water.
There is no ocean or water, it is all just me.
Thoughts and thinking are both just appearing in awareness, which is me. Everything that appears other than me can only be me, because if it is true that life in non dual, advaita, as the scriptures are saying then there can be nothing other then awareness in which all thoughts arise and disappear.
So you cannot Be in the Now, as hard as you may try. You never left it.
Every effort sooner or later has to be given up. Your present is effortless and it is happening already, every moment of your life.
If you read so far, now is the time to sit down with a cup of tea to let that sink in
Namaste Pujan