Unlike us humans, animals still have the ability to stay in the Now. To them, time is irrelevant. Photo: Pexels
What I have learned lately can simply be described as the necessity of staying in the moment, in the Now. However, the matter is as usual quite a bit more complicated than that. Our spiritual enemy so to say – or in other words what keeps us most disconnected from our divine way of being – is the man-made concept of time.
How time is ruining our natural way of being
I know it doesn’t sound as threatening. But think of it this way. Before we evolved into the emancipated and developed society that we are, we used to wake up with the sun, work during the day, and rest when the sun set again. We didn’t know what next Tuesday was. We also didn’t need no holidays or weekend, that we are now so lucking forward to. Because we used to be able to listen to our bodies and just rest when we needed it.
But then we started evolving and suddenly we have turned into a society where it seems that all we care about are deadlines and the achievements that come afterwards. We wake up far too early and go to bed far too late. We live with constant stress and our generation is closer to a burn-out than any generation has been before us.
The Past and the Future – our Enemies?
Sadly, we live completely out of touch with what is good for us, physically and spiritually talking. We seem to care more about what we did wrong in the past, and what the future might hold for us, or how it might stress us out. Our lives seem to be dominated by either depression or anxiety.
This could all be avoided by simply staying in the moment. This is what Eckhart Tolle calls the Power of Now (just like the title of his most famous book). In the present moment, the Now, misery and suffering doesn’t exist. Because if we think about it, we are only ever stressed about something that comes in the future.
The Beauty of the present moment
We are driven by this fear of pain. But the only moment we could really live this pain is in the now. And usually, whatever we stress about doesn’t really happen, or at least not with as much gravity as we imagined it would.
We let ourselves be robbed of the present moment for a possible outcome in the future that we cannot guarantee will happen. However, if we could just learn to live in the Now, we could be so much happier, while not having to face the pain of stress and anxiety we usually let our lives be ruined by.
It even impacts our aging-process
Interestingly enough, Tolle also states that we would age much slower if we learned to live more in the now. Because if we always yearn towards a future, imagining possible scenarios that might or might not happen to us, our cells feel more rushed and therefore also want to get to this future you’re longing for faster, and therefore age.
Reaching Enlightenment through the Now
However, the healthiest we can be is if we let go of all expectations we have for our life to come, and all the regrets we have about the life we have lived so far, and instead learn to be as present as we can be. Tolle also calls the process of living in the now enlightenment.
It’s nothing more than that. Just the ability to accept every situations that comes towards us as it is and put all of our attention towards this one moment we’re currently living. Because that’s all we’ve got now and all we ever will have of life. The rest only ever exists in our imagination.
I hope that was some food for thought. Let me know what you think about what I just shared.
Love, Valentina
Written by Valentina – spiritual writer & founder of Valentina’s Diary
