The Future Is Now

Here's a little ditty for those who may be experiencing fears of THE FUTURE...

A few years back, I met with a couple of non-professional life coaches, a man and a woman, in a North Bay café. These volunteer folks were well-meaning community members; we were gathered together, ostensibly, to look at my finances and work life. I was curious to see if there was something I might have missed in the material realm that could be nourishing to my bank account. So I availed myself of some old-fashioned financial coaching.

Financial coaching was going to take a different tack with someone like me. I’d been traveling between three continents constantly since 2006 – several years sans permanent home, car, or stable job. I was essentially a spiritual counselor and modern day monastic. When it comes to livelihood, I suppose one could ask: Is that cool? Is that healthy? Sane?

It is the Way It Is, and who could ever change that?!

In 2011, I had a spiritual awakening in which the conceptual 'me,' aka the separate will, fell away. That awakening has been a wonderful, horrible* thing, a realization that the ultimate ground of inner peace is unshakable, no matter what. Even if there are tsunamis and earthquakes within and without this body-mind being, nothing changes the serenity of the I of the storm. Plus, I know I can’t do anything that isn’t in the Flow of Life anyway; a home and a car will come when they are meant to come into my life.

But I still live in society and occasionally need to have a look-see at my life through society’s eyes, for better or for worse. That day in the cafe, my volunteer coaches sat me down over coffee and listened to the way I live my life – from moment to moment, from moment to moment – and said, “But how are you planning for The Future?”

The Future… I thought to myself. The Future. The term sounded completely foreign to me, as if I’d just heard it for the first time. A fascinating concept that once had a meaning. I looked and looked into Consciousness and could not find a Future anywhere.

What is The Future? I asked myself right then and there. I was bobbing my head up and down. My physical body contorted and moved around the coffee table. I practically peered under the table to look for a future. I crawled inside my own skin and into the workings of my brain to find anything at all resembling a Future. I was totally stumped. Just like the small self of the “me,” an illusory central locus of doer-ship, I could not find it anywhere at all. No such thing existed at the moment. It was a word, Greek to me in actuality.

After about a minute, with all sincerity, I told the man and woman coaches, “The Future? It doesn’t exist. I honestly cannot find a Future anywhere.”

I started chuckling softly to myself as I stirred my cappuccino. It turned into a semi-mad giggle as I was tickled at the concept. The man and woman looked at each other.

Oh dear God, clearly they think I’ve lost the plot!

“We don’t know what to do with you,” the woman said. “You are a special case.”

I felt bad for them. I realized I wasn’t a good candidate for their free financial planning session. I was a train wreck in their eyes, and I was potentially someone who may need serious psychotherapy. Yes, I was a person who had lost the belief in the mind… and was quite fine with it. Out of curiosity, I kept stirring my cappuccino and sincerely kept looking for a Future somewhere in Consciousness. 

“Oh! Wait, wait, wait!” I declared, having an epiphany. “The Future does exist… when it comes into the Present Awareness!” I smiled gleefully, like a little student who had finally come up with a correct answer. I had found something to say to please the parentals.

I had found a Future! And the future is Now.

Say, for example, it comes into my current awareness that I want to book a flight to India, departing this coming January. I find myself going to the travel website now, and booking the flight. That action happens NOW. I book NOW for something that may or may not actually happen. But the action is always NOW, rising up from the Ground of Existence.

How does this play out for big-ticket item planning, like buying a car, a house, or preparing for retirement? Same thing. You have a current awareness that holds strong enough TODAY that it is time to put money aside for that which you THINK may happen. You don’t know that you will buy that house, or even that the retirement funds will be there when you’re 65, or that you will live that long. But your current awareness directs an action to set up whatever you set up today. And the next day, your awareness may change. The money may disappear suddenly, or you may opt out of the system entirely and go raise sheep in New Zealand. You have NO idea what will happen next. You can only surmise. You can only act on what is NOW.

Check yourself now (and I'm right there with you, my friend!) -- How much unnecessary fear and anxiety is pulsing through the body-mind based on ideas and concepts of what may be? Be especially vigilant and alert to what others tell you that you should be doing. If you’re like me, I’ve been especially susceptible to others’ conditioning and projections. Can you STOP buying into an empty thought of Future (or Past) for just one moment? Try it, then try it again. You may find you have a lot more time and energy when you rest in the now, and see what arises, all by itself.

Erin Reese is a writer, astrologer, and psychic reader based in the San Francisco Bay Area. For readings and spiritual counseling by Skype, phone or email, contact her via email at erin@erinreese.com. Like to offer a unique, lasting gift to a loved one for the holidays? Consider giving them an astrology or psychic tarot consultation!


(*The "horrible" aspect of the spiritual awakening, for some of us, is the relative loss of ego-ambition which destroys the old drives to achieve for the sake of proving one's existence. I am now in an embodiment process that is like having no self-editor and no lid on Pandora's Box, for better or for worse - but we'll get to that another day.)

AND NOW, A WORD FROM ECKHART:

The only existence of what we call "Future" is as a thought in your head. Beyond that there is no such thing as Future. If there were such thing as Future, somebody - some great explorer - would have found it and we would have a monument: "He discovered the Future." So far, it hasn't happened, and it's not likely to happen because it is a conceptual thing only. When the Future comes, which is a thought, it can only appear in the space of your aware Presence (the light of Consciousness) - it can only appear as the Now. Whatever form it takes in the space of Now (that you are) something appears. It's the Now - the form of Now. So, no such thing as future. The Future is a thought. And this also applies to The Past.

  

~ Eckhart Tolle, "The Future Is A Thought"