To alert you that you have allowed yourself to be taken over by
psychological time, you can use a simple criterion. Ask yourself: Is
there joy, ease, and lightness in what I am doing? If there isn’t, then
time is covering up the present moment, and life is perceived as a
burden or a struggle.
If there is no joy, ease, or lightness in what you are doing, it does not
necessarily mean that you need to change what you are doing. It may
be sufficient to change the how. “How” is always more important than
“what.” See if you can give much more attention to the doing than to
the result that you want to achieve through it. Give your fullest
attention to whatever the moment presents. This implies that you
also completely accept what is, because you cannot give your full
attention to something and at the same time resist it.
As soon as you honor the present moment, all unhappiness and
struggle dissolve, and life begins to flow with joy and ease. When you
act out of present-moment awareness, whatever you do becomes
imbued with a sense of quality, care, and love — even the most
simple action.
So do not be concerned with the fruit of your action — just give
attention to the action itself. The fruit will come of its own accord.
This is a powerful spiritual practice. In the Bhagavad Gita, one of the
oldest and most beautiful spiritual teachings in existence,
nonattachment to the fruit of your action is called Karma Yoga. It is
described as the path of “consecrated action.”
When the compulsive striving away from the Now ceases, the joy of
Being flows into everything you do. The moment your attention turns
to the Now, you feel a presence, a stillness, a peace. You no longer
depend on the future for fulfillment and satisfaction — you don’t look
to it for salvation. Therefore, you are not attached to the results.
Neither failure nor success has the power to change your inner state
of Being. You have found the life underneath your life situation.
In the absence of psychological time, your sense of self is derived
from Being, not from your personal past. Therefore, the psychological
need to become anything other than who you are already is no longer
there. In the world, on the level of your life situation, you may indeed
become wealthy, knowledgeable, successful, free of this or that, but
in the deeper dimension of Being you are complete and whole now.
In that state of wholeness, would we still be able or willing to pursue
external goals?
Of course, but you will not have illusory expectations that anything or
anybody in the future will save you or make you happy. As far as your
life situation is concerned, there may be things to be attained or
acquired. That’s the world of form, of gain and loss. Yet on a deeper
level you are already complete, and when you realize that, there is a
playful, joyous energy behind what you do. Being free of psychological
time, you no longer pursue your goals with grim determination, driven
by fear, anger, discontent, or the need to become someone. Nor will
you remain inactive through fear of failure, which to the ego is loss of
self. When your deeper sense of self is derived from Being, when you
are free of “becoming” as a psychological need, neither your
happiness nor your sense of self depends on the outcome, and so
there is freedom from fear. You don’t seek permanency where it
cannot be found: in the world of form, of gain and loss, birth and
death. You don’t demand that situations, conditions, places, or people
should make you happy, and then suffer when they don’t live up to
your expectations.
Everything is honored, but nothing matters. Forms are born and die,
yet you are aware of the eternal underneath the forms. You know that
“nothing real can be threatened.” 3
When this is your state of Being, how can you not succeed? You have
succeeded already.
CHAPTER FOUR
MIND STRATEGIES FOR
AVOIDING THE NOW