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The Power of Now has been the greatest enlightenment of my life.

There's many sayings about living for the moment, tomorrow never comes, live for the now, now is a gift that is why it is called the present, etc, I have read a lot of books on Taoism, Zen, etc and they often speak about the Now "There is no past, there is no future, there is only Now". These are all good and although I understood it on an intellectual level I still didn't really get it, although I thought I did.  Then one day despite having read this message over and over again, BANG! I got it! I understood what the message is but on a different level of consciousness. I don't like to use the term but I was enlightened. I will try to give some insight into Nowness but in honesty I cannot say on what level you will understand it, I guess any level is good really :)


The message is extremely simple and I have already summed it up above, I'll expand on that in a moment, yet the subject can also be extremely complex and many a book has been written to explain Now. After my enlightenment I purchased The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment which has got to be the single most important and influential book I have read, probably because it was the right book at the right time.

Okay so lets talk about now. I summed it up in the first paragraph with the saying "There is no past, there is no future, there is only Now." I'll break these down:

There is no past
"Of course there's past" I here you say. Well theres not, not anymore. If there is then where is it? It is simply in your head, a memory, it does not actually exist anymore it has gone. And I'm not just talking about ten years ago or five or two or even yesterday I'm talking about your time now, it's going. When you read "it's going" well now it's gone. The only moment that ever exists is this one right Now.

Of course we need to draw on experiences of the past, we need to learn but we cannot live there, it doesn't exist.

There is no future
If theres no future then where are we going? The future will always be the Now. You know the saying "Tomorrow never comes" (easy one that eh?) well it doesn't because Now is all we have. We can look to the future but it is what we do in the Now that will decide the outcome of that future which will then become the Now :)

There is only Now
Hopefully you're getting it, like I said it is actually a very simple concept but extremely hard to write about (for me) but it's such an important message that I persist with my struggle to get my message across. So Now is all we have not a millisecond either way, we must strive to have complete awareness or consciousness in this moment.

We've all experienced Nowness some of us more than others, it's when we do things that we really enjoy that we get a buzz from. For example you sit on a roller coaster and go for the ride of your life what are you thinking about? Nothing. You are living for that moment, nothing else exists only that very moment in time. Or perhaps you play tennis or some other sporting activity, your mind is 100% on the game, you are living in the Now but what happens when your mind isn't 100% on the game? You're crap.

If we look at the concept of time as in hours and minutes, days, weeks, months and years they don't really exist. It is an invention of man so that we may live in a structured society. If you lived in a wood with no contact with the outside world would "time" really matter? Do you think animals have any concept of time?

When all this hit home and my level of consciousness changed regarding the Now it really was like seeing everything for the first time, the world around me changed. Decision making, attitudes, stress, everything it all changed.

Now I've got it it stays with me. At first I felt quite smug, like "haha I know the secret of life and no one else does", but obviously they do, perhaps you understand Nowness already, I don't know. Maybe you're reading this and thinking "ha you just don't get it", although I hope not. The thing is we're all individuals thats what makes us all the same.

I really don't know what you'll make of all this, I'd like to hear if you have a comment. I don't want to seem like I'm lecturing or egotistical (with my "enlightenment") I just want to share.

Like I said at the beginning of the article I would highly recommend The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment