What is the now?

[donq]

Everytime I heard that Frank Sinatra's song (And now, the end is near; And so I face the final curtain) I always heard it as "and the now". Yes, I know it was the sound of the "d" pronunciation. Anyway, here comes this thread.


The now is a complex. It's a totally subjective awareness which is composed of the past experience, the present awareness and the anticipation of the future. The immediate stimuli is only a part of the entire experience. It's not only about conscious experience as it could occur without conscious awareness. 

Émile Coué, a famous psychologist on auto-suggestion, said that walking on the ground is easy but walking the same plank suspended high above the ground is so hard (if not impossible). He describes the Will as “powerless to make you advance” and "Whenever the will and the imagination are in conflict, the imagination always wins".
So, how to stick to the present moment?
Sure, no one could force the process of now. Trying not to think about the past, nor the future, is like trying not to think about the pink elephant. That very pink elephant still pops up in your mind anyway. However, the realization of the now experience, the present moment, even in a single moment, will establish a solid experience which will come to a pleasant ending in one way or another. Something like a snowball effect that creates an avalanche later.
Yes, I know, it's easier said than done.

Please feel free to add anything. Thanks.      

[donq]

Hi Robert,

Very good post! Thanks for your sharing.
I do agree with you all. Though I think that the problem still is "how to know the now". Somebody are living in the now but don't know they are. That's the problem, isn't it. Here's a joke about it:  
There were these two young fish swimming along, and they happened to meet an older fish swimming the other way.
The old fish nodded at them and said, ""Morning, boys, how's the water?"
"Fine," they answered. And the two young fish swam on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looked at the other and said, "What the heck is water?"

I also agree with you about "a double edged sword".
What you said was so true. It reminds me of some serious issue in Buddhist meditation. Meditation is good. No doubt. Most (if not all) spiritual persons (both Buddhists and non-Buddhists) meditate. But as for Buddhism, there are two different kinds of meditation: samatha vs. vipassana. To make the long short, samatha means calm abiding, tranquility or the calming of the mind (via meditation) while vipassana means seeing clearly or insight into the true nature of reality.
If a meditator attaches to only calm abiding, he will never wanted to allow emotions to rise, to know/realize/learn from them. See the differences? That means he will have problem for sure, after he paused his meditation and went into the real life situations.
Yes, like you said, samatha seems to be a form of escapism.   
More than samatha vs. vipassana, Buddhism also has mindfulness practice which it's too long to say anything about it here.

P.S. I apologize for some Buddhist terms. Didn't mean to promote it here.



 

[gruntal]

There seems to be quite a lot of channeling going on where I live. Limiting that to just transitioned human beings - not Ascended Masters or what we term Angels - it is interesting to note they seem to live in a certain time frame just like we do as incarnated beings. Their memories don't seem to fade as much as they don't attach as much importance to them as we do. I guess because they don't have any immediate worries to contend with. But life for them goes on just as it does with us the living. It apparently is appreciated on a daily basis and/or is experienced that way.

The main difference I can see is we can change our daily fate. And reap the rewards for doing so. We can also die. If we do the wrong things like ignoring the laws of chemistry and physics. Even our DNA is fixed at our birth and we have to live with that. To come back is to forget what we were and what is yet to come.

To do otherwise is like making up the rules of a game as you go along. That is cheating !

Well it has been argued with live in many time streams simultaneously and I am sure we do. But I have not heard of any mortal capable of experiencing that if and when they choose a physical existence.

[donq]

Hi George,

Thank so much for your post.  

Maybe it is true as G.K. Chesterton once said, "Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly"?

Here's another joke:

A man trying to understand the nature of God asked him: “God, how long is a million years to you?” God answered, “A million years is like a minute.” Then the man asked, “God, how much is a million dollars to you?” And God replied, “A million dollars is like a penny.” Finally the man asked, “ God, could you give me a penny?” And God said, “In a minute!”

The nature of God is always a mysterious. And if “God is dead.” as Nietzsche said, well,  Nietzsche himself is also pretty dead.

If we want to enter the now, to be one with everything, we might have to deal with the change?

The Yogi walked into the Zen Pizza Parlor and said: “Make me one with everything.” When the Yogi got the pizza, he gave the proprietor a $20 bill. The proprietor pocketed the bill. The Yogi said “Don’t I get any change?” The proprietor said, “Change must come from within.”

Change comes from within? The now is within, not without? Really?

Four monks were meditating in a temple when, all of a sudden, the prayer flag on the roof started flapping.
The youngest monk came out of his meditation and said, "Flag is flapping."
The second, more experienced monk said, "Wind is flapping."   
The third monk, who had been there for more than twenty years, said, "Mind is flapping."   
The fourth monk, who was the eldest, said, "Mouths are flapping!"

I do like what you said in the last sentence. It reminds me of Zen's quote:

A Zen monk was asked, "How much 'ego' do you need?
He replied, "Just enough so that you don’t step in front of a bus."

We talk a lot about here and now, about non-ego, about not thinking.
One Buddhist monk leaned over to another and quietly asked, "Are you not thinking what I'm not thinking?"
Could that really be done?

P.S. Sorry about my quotes on Zen. The reason I don't want to promote Buddhism here much because it's the internet. And I'm afraid after we absorb it too much, everyone might enter Nerdvana. So, we have to be careful whenever using the internet. Even our emails, try with no attachments!

[aceofcups]

In the same vein---Not sure if anyone here has heard of Swami Beyondanada... here is humorous video of one on his performance-