Doing It In The Now

It seems many people want to get the idea of what enlightenment looks like.  We're all trying to "figure it out."  I get many emails discussing understanding these ideas.  This podcast is about doing them instead.

The "Now" has become very trendy.  So let's not get lost in ideas about it.  We even have great philosophical minds telling us we don't have time to be in the now, which is a bit ridiculous.  What I think they are saying is that we shouldn't be trendy about the Now.

Because we can play with words and ideas and labels at this level we should see that we will never "figure it out."  Rather we should look at the desire that we have to figure it out.  The idea of how to do this is less important than doing it.  Our minds want to become experts, and so we look at all the possibilities of "getting lost" so that we can be sure that we will win "when those things show up."  But that state of mind is already lost.  The waiting, thinking, planning mind is exactly the mind we are trying to put down.

Someone comes across the idea of being at peace.  And they are listening to guided audios and trying to meditate.  And they realize they are not at peace.  The mind that is trying to get to peace is lost in time.  The mind that wants to "DO" peace is the mind that puts down expectations.  This may feel very unnatural to us.  We want to figure it out instead.

So when we "DO" peace, when we allow for peace of mind by coming to this moment, whatever it is, we are doing it "all the time".  Because we start to realize that now is all there is.

The important concept is this: getting to this moment "is the end of it", EVEN if we leave this moment.  Sounds like a cop out, and is hard to get your mind around, but it's the truth.

So let's look at the actuality of living in the Now.  We don't care if we can do it permanently, because that is another idea.  We just want to do it now.  When we come to the Now in this moment (whenever that is), we realize that this moment is always here.  So that is all we have to do. 

The mind will kick up again and say things like "You won't be able to do that in the future."  And that may even knock us off a bit, but seeing that once we DO come back, there is no tally of how long we've been gone.  So doing it now IS doing it forever.  Because the illusion is the mind that creates a future that doesn't exist.

So doing it in the now is as simple as coming to what you are, your breath, this moment, the sounds, the fears, the whatever, without worrying if you can do it again later.  If you're doing it now, you're doing it forever.