Making the Present Time Truly a Present

As mentioned before in other posts, every now and then I make use of phrases and thoughts of the character Benedict, from my book "The Paths of Love in Bread & Joy", using his wisdom as a reference for new posts. The chosen phrase of Benedict for today's reflections says:

“I will make the best out of my present time, because it’s all I have. I will make of my past a source of learning experiences, and of my future, a sea of possibilities."

In this wise guidance, Benedict was already anticipating that, sooner or later, the pains of the past, or the afflictions caused by the uncertainties of the future, would distress the thoughts and feelings of his grandson Frank, and sought, of course, to calm the emotions arising from such inevitable torments. And, between you and I, suffering such torments is far from being Frank's privilege.

In his book "The Power of Now," the German spiritualist Eckhart Tolle draws our attention to the fact that, many of our sufferings emanate from our inability to live and focus on the present moment. Our thoughts are constantly wandering around some past experience or directed to some concern related to possible future events, I remind you that a preoccupation is nothing but the act of pre-occupying ourselves with something that is yet to happen.

However, Tolle goes one step further, and says that we not only occupy our minds with past or upcoming events, but we create interpretations about them and, even worse, we identify deeply with such interpretations, reaching the nonsense of defining ourselves as persons around them.

If, at some point in our lives, we fail at something, we interpret this failure as a shameful and definitive defeat. We then take this interpretation as the representation of the absolute truth and, as in an act of magic, we become irremediable losers.

If we have an event to happen, and we are convinced that its outcome will be important for one reason or another, we begin to plot a sequence of catastrophic events that may occur if things do not work out, and consequently, our future becomes an imminent potential catastrophe.   

And when a sequence of events like the ones described above accumulate, the result can only be of emotional imbalance, and, at its limit, the deterioration of our mental health.

Nowadays, it is determined by psychology, that the non-acceptance of the past generates depression, and the insistence on living in the future, seeking to anticipate events due to our fears and insecurity, generates anxiety. And the impression I have is that, in current times, we fit more and more in one of these two categories. Or, in the worst cases, in both. We live in a world of depressed and/or anxious people.

We do not accept the losses that life brings us, we reject personal and professional defeats, we judge undesired changes as divine punishment, we despair due to unwanted separations. As we go on a collision course with the past, we are starting an inglorious fight that we cannot win, since the past will not change, and the more we spend energy to "fix it", the more anguish we create. And by living in constant conflict with our past, we also reject the present, since one is a consequence of the other. And depression starts to take shape.     

On the other hand, the desire to control future events is something natural of the human being. From the dawn of civilization, we have tried to influence the will of the gods towards weather fluctuations, so that it might lean in favor of our crops, or our hunting intentions in search for food. But modern man took this concern and desire to control the future to a whole new level, seeking to anticipate not only the climate, but the financial results of the quarter, the achievement of a professional goal, the successes of our child, the paying of a debt, the end result of a relationship, and so on. The list is endless. And the more we try to control the future, the more we get frustrated, the more we let ourselves down, and the more anxious we become.    

According to Tolle, and many other spiritual and psychology "gurus," the antidote to these situations of illness is very simple and depend on two fundamental points. First, we must make peace with our past, not just by accepting it, but by looking at it with apprentice eyes. And secondly, to turn ourselves to the future with faith in God, and the belief that there is in front of us a sea of possibilities to be explored.

We must look at our past as an inexhaustible source of lessons to be learned. By rejecting it, we are also rejecting such lessons, and with them, unique opportunities to grow and reach new levels of mental and spiritual development. 

Another intention must be of no longer feeding our fears about what might happen in the future, and replacing them with faith, fostering the belief that everything that will happen in our lives will only occur with divine permission. Whatever comes, will carry as main objective, to serve as a pedagogical instrument, so that we can follow our evolutionary path towards enlightenment.

By making peace with our past, and by changing the way we look at our future, we will only have one thing left to do. Focus on the present. The only time of our lives we can really act on. It’s in the present that we love. It’s in the present that we interact with the people we care about. It’s in the present that we can effectively make a difference and transform ourselves from the inside out.

The only thing left for us to do, is to learn that today is truly a divine present. When we come to treat it as such, when we are at peace with our past, and have developed the faith in God's plans for what is yet to come, we will conquer the long desired spiritual peace and mental health.  

The past is gone. The future belongs to God. Should we take care of the now?