"The deeper you go inside yourself, the more you discover the hidden treasure of your soul."
— Maxime Lagacé
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Something to practice:
We were talking about this last week in our little Ascension mentoring group …
“Am I doing it right?” … this little unconscious dialogue gets triggered in us all the time and it’s one of the biggest handbrakes to authenticity, courage, aliveness and growth.
A suggestion –
Be aware of that arising, and practice indulging that question less this week.
It may come, but try not to sustain it. It’s not worth anything to you.
Instead – go for less right/wrong and more explore. Less good/bad, more honest, real you. Less self-criticism, more free, un-self conscious play.
Carry some lightness instead of evaluation. Give yourself a chance just to be you, without the handbrake of doing it right.
What have you got to lose? Except a heavy weight?
Do this consistently and you'll come to a place where you are perfectly content in your own skin. Nothing to prove and nothing to hide, with nothing to fear too.
Such lightness. Such freedom!
(and google “Growth Mindset” and see where that takes you.)
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Quote that suits today:
"Time isn't precious at all, because it is an illusion. What you perceive as precious is not time but the one point that is out of time: the Now. That is precious indeed. The more you are focused on time—past and future—the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is."
— Eckhart Tolle
Precious indeed. Read on below.
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This week’s longer read:
The True Nature of Now
Now is a term that gets thrown around a lot. I do it, every single meditation and mindfulness teacher and influencer under the sun does it.
The word gets chucked around so much that it has become a cliche. A cliche – something that’s lost its impact through repetition without consideration. Cliches become cliches for that very reason: at their heart, they are vitally true.
So, let’s go deeper into Now. Take some time with this one, it’s worth getting to grips with. It’s useful in so many ways, and not just in a spiritual sense of freedom. Make a moment or two when you’re undisturbed. Return to it; and critically – don’t think about it, experience it.
Now is not one of a succession of moments in a parade of time, with the past to our left and the future to our right. Now is not a thin slice of your life. It’s actually always now.
Your experience of life says this is true. Your senses – when used freshly, and without expectation – only take in present moment information. Your thoughts … well, here is the only place the past and the future exist: time is a theory, a concept. A useful one, I give you that. However, it’s taken over so much, we have precious little now any more.
We often complain about never having enough time. We time travel constantly, harassed by memories of the past and fears for the future, or a comparison that is lacking. Nostalgia feels nice but so often it was better when … and the grass is always greener. We often don’t see the present moment clearly because, as Anais Nin wrote, we’re so in our heads we don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
Now, on the other hand, is free of problems. Try it out. You have no problems right now.
Correct?
Yes, yes, and if you were being attacked or chased or whatever right now (so why are you reading this?!), you’d be so involved in the moment, i.e. so present you wouldn’t have time to consider past/future. That comes later in the stories you tell yourself about it. Intense, undeniably. You might need to take time to recover. Traumatic and long lasting? Depends on the story you tell.
Now has facts, the mind has stories. Facts you can deal with, stories always lead to suffering.
Now is free of problems. There might be a problem on the horizon. But you never truly know until you get there. As Seneca once noted, “We suffer more often in imagination than in reality”. Preparation might be necessary, true, but stay flexible for what might come by engaging in the present now.
If you want peace from an over-active mind, less hassle from the past and future, get out of your mind. If you want to truly engage with the present moment so you can truly “focus” and get the job done, stop thinking about it and dive into it.
Now is your friend. A sanctuary AND a place you can stand tall.
As I was saying, now is not a thin slice of time, followed by another now and another.
Now – if you tune into now, notice what now is like for you – is more like a space that extends onwards. By exploring now, you’ll find it has a quality of quiet, silent, empty expanse. Alive and rich, but pure. Now is more to do with infinity than a tick on a clock.
What’s more, now is always with you, and it IS always you.
Don’t take my word for it, explore it. Tune in and see what now is like for you.
When you prioritise now, even if you can only stay for a moment in time before the self-critical mind comes back in, means you are free from having to be any particular way. You suspend your mind’s idea of time, of your past of your future, of who you’ve come to believe you are and who you should be.
Now is a sanctuary and a foundation but also a healer. It is a disruptor to all the limiting patterns you and I hold. No limit can withstand now. And the more you remember and return, the more the grip those habits and ideas and patterns simply fall away. Gone forever, gone for good, without much or perhaps any need to process and therapise them away. They melt away like the night as the sun rises.
Amazing huh?
Now is powerfully transformative and healing.
Explore now. Not just as a “yeah-yeah, present moment, heard it all before” but deeply. And not with an end result in mind, see if you can suspend that “Am I doing it right?” business we’ve been taught is a good idea. Play and explore innocently. Take time (haha) to connect with the timeless quality of now.
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And that is quite enough on that from me.
I hope that was useful. Look, this stuff is pretty simple, but having the lived experience – that’s harder. It seems being reminded is a quick way back (so hangout with people and content that remind you), but the real thing is that you want to remind yourself.
This is where a practice comes in, a vehicle, a tool that you can use to get you out of your mind and into the heart of now. If you’re looking, my practice is Ascension. It’s beautifully sweet, simple and direct, and it’s the one thing I’ve been doing every single day for over 20 years.
Next courses are April 25-27th, and July 4-6th (All courses run Fri 7-9:30pm, Sat and Sun 10am-4:30pm). £360, repeats are always free.
Let me know if you want more details and we can chat.
Til next time, go well,
Arjuna