Open-Secrets

Tag: be-here-now

  • How Easy is it to Be in the NOW?

    Source: WikipediaIn 1971 Ram Das entreated us to Be Here Now. It is currently in its 37th reprinting and has sold over one million copies.

    In 1999 Eckhart Tolle told us about the Power of Now. The Power of Now gained power from word-of-mouth, the New York Times’ Bestseller List and Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club.

    The continuing popularity of these books reflect the continued interest in the spiritual journey. Oprah and Eckhart Tolle have one of the most dynamic presentations to ever hit the web. according to reports, over 500,000 people are trying to tune in to the ten-week series.

    In June of 2008, Shambhala willl publish A.H. Almaas’ 14th book – The Unfolding Now.

    The keys to self-knowledge and deep contentment are right here before us in this very moment—if we can simply learn to live with open awareness. In The Unfolding Now, A. H. Almaas presents a marvelously effective practice for developing the transformative quality of presence. Through a particular method of self-observation and contemplative exploration that he calls inquiry, we learn to live in the relaxed condition of simply “being ourselves,” without interference from feelings of inadequacy, drivenness toward goals, struggling to figure things out, and rejecting experiences we don’t want. Almaas explores the many obstacles that keep us from being present—including defensiveness, ignorance, desire, aggression, and self-hatred—and shows us how to welcome with curiosity and compassion whatever we are experiencing. – from the bookcover.

    Unfolding_nowWhat keeps us from living in the Now?

    This book is an exploration of the barriers and obstacles to Being Here Now that prevent us from experiencing the reality of the Power of Now. In short, it looks at the mind, the ego, and how the past keep us from being able to be in the now.

    How is our experience within time a hindrance to our experience of our essential nature?

    …our time orientation will disconnect us from our True Nature because it contradicts the now-ness, the timelessness, of our True Nature. It is paradoxical, of course, to think about things that way because we are always thinking in terms of time. The time axis is very important for the mind. The mind is always thinking of things in the past and of what it is going to do in the future. It rarely settles in the moment. If it did, it would become quiet.

    When you settle into the moment, you realize that there is not much happening—a few things here and there. The primary awareness is of the immediacy of the moment. This is because presence—being in the now—is characterized by beingness, simply being here now. In contrast, our familiar self is based on doing, going, making things happen. We do not trust that action can arise and proceed from inner stillness; we do not recognize that Being is the ground of everything. To be in the now connects you with that quiet beingness that underlies all changes, all activity—the simple hereness where what is most basic is not activity but presence.

    So when we are not settled, all the images, all the reifications, all the projections from the past arise and influence the present. We don’t see the present as the present; and we don’t experience the presence of the present.

    That same influence of the past also keeps orienting us toward the future. Something will come up from the past that we are not happy about, and in our desire for things to be better in the future, we disconnect ourselves from the moment. We miss the now. And when we miss the now, we don’t just waste time, we miss the now-ness of what we are, the realness, the here-ness—the very fact that we are.

    When people talk about being in the here and now, it is a more profound experience than simply being aware of the content of the experience of the moment. It begins with that awareness because the content of the moment is what is arising now. So, we are aware of the content of the moment—the physical attributes, the feelings, and the thoughts that are arising in the moment. But the more we are attuned to what is arising in the moment, the more time slows down as we become more present to the moment. And when we become more present to the moment, we begin to recognize the now-ness itself, which turns out to be the presence that is present to the moment.

    So, my presence is the now-ness of the moment; they are not separate. It is not that my presence is present in the now of the moment; the presence is the now of the moment. That is how we actually know what presence is. In the practice of being where we are, it becomes clear that to be ourselves, to be real, we need to be in the present moment. We need to attend to the moment, we need to embrace and be completely aware, immediately in touch, with the moment. This immediate in-touchness with the moment is the in-touchness with the now-ness of the moment, which is the same thing as the Being of our presence.

    In some sense, all the obstacles to being ourselves that we have observed and explored so far are basically in time; they are a function of the passage of time perceived in the linear sense. They come from the past and move into the future. If our center of consciousness is operating within a linear time framework—in the passage from the past to the future—it will be engaged in these obstacles. Our judgments and rejections and hopes and desires and expectations all happen in time. Even our inner practice becomes a practice in time. We are going from one point of time to another for a process that has a beginning and an end. There is a cause and a result: something we do now will result in a change in the future. That kind of time orientation will dislocate us, will take us outside the presence of what we are and into the ephemeral mental world of time, which is where most people live. – The Unfolding Now

    The Unfolding Now table of contents here.

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  • Are We All Here

    This is not so much a question as a topic of exploration. I think it is worth exploring because, in this world, our concern with location seems to touch most of what we do. These days we have GPS to help us pinpoint exactly where we are on planet earth. With the push of a button we can know precisely where we are. And with Twitter and similar social networking tools, we can share our location instantly with our entire network of friends.

    So, we have these great gizmos that can tell us and everyone else precisely where we are, but the question remains –  how do we know this is where we are?

    When we consider location in three-dimensional space, our location is defined in terms relative to other things in three-dimensional space. Our location in any space is usually described in terms of where our body is. I’m here, you’re there. I’m in front of you. The chair is to the left of me. The ceiling is above me.

    Some of the reasons our location seems so important: we can tell others where we are, where we have been and we can often use that to help us get to where we want to be.

    It’s the same in the spiritual dimension only different. For one thing, it’s oriented more toward the internal than the external. It’s more about our subjective sense of location within our experience than our body’s location in our world experience.

    If we examine our sense of where we are subjectively we almost always drill it down to – I am here. Here seems to be the only word that can accurately reflect where it is we really are. Oh, we can give all kinds of relative descriptors, but when we really boil it down, we are simply Here. So where is Here?

    Well, Here is Here. It’s not there or elsewhere – it is Here. Here is where we are. We are always Here.

    Here seems to reflect the nexus of our experience. Here seems to be at the core of our experience.

    Spiritual teachers, mystics and masters seem to think Here has real significance. They continually encourage us to – Be Here Now (three words that mean the same thing). Be, Be, Be. Here, Here, Here, Now, Now, Now. These sound repetitive. Be Here Now sounds profound – is profound.

    When certain people invoke us to, Be Here Now, it seems to draw more of us into Here, into Now, into Being. Most of us have had some experience of that – being more Here at times. For many of us those times when we seem more Here, appear to substantially outnumber all of the other times when we’re – not so much Here. We’re here in the ordinary way, but when we’re really Being Here Now – the experience seems extraordinary – beyond the ordinary.

    Are you getting a sense of the significance of Here to our experience The more we are Here, the richer our experience is. The deeper the sense of Here, the more profound our experience. The more palpable Here is, the more intimate our experience.

    I have yet to meet one person who experienced Here in a deeper, more profound, more intimate way that did not long to Be Here Now more.

    Why is that? Simply put: It is more enjoyable than our normal experience. It is more pleasurable than our ordinary experience. It is more satisfying than our normal experience. It is more fulfilling than our normal experience. It is more integrating and complete than our ordinary experience. In short – it is more positive in many, many ways than our ordinary experience.

    In comparison our ordinary experience seems – ordinary – dull, lifeless, pedestrian and plain. Being Here Now – is more real to us.

    So, if being more Here is a good desirable thing – how do we do it? How do we get more Here, deeper into Here, closer to Here?

    It’s simple. First, we start with where we are. And where are we? Well, we’re all Here. This really shortens the journey! We don’t have to go anywhere to be Here, we’re already Here! But our experience of Here right now, might seem ordinary, might not seem like that deeper Here, that intimate Here, that profound Here that we long for. So how does that happen?

    Well, we don’t go there to get Here. Going there means we leave Here. Doing that takes us away from Here so there is no hope of experiencing the extraordinary Here if we go there.

    No, we start Here, right Here where we are AND we get closer to Here right Here where we are. We do that by getting to know Here more intimately and the easy way to do that is to explore our experience Here and Now. We do that by learning how to BE our experience.

    Most of us, in this culture, have a deep conditioning that leaves us thinking more about our experience rather than experiencing our experience. So, we want to deepen and expand our experience beyond just thinking. The Here deepens and expands as our experience does. Bringing in our feelings and sensations deepens and expands our experience.

    As more of us opens to our experience, the more we feel in touch with our experience. The more in-touch, the more intimacy. The more intimacy, the more we feel Here.

    I am going to leave this exploration right Here, for NOW.

Open-Secrets