What a gift! We have heard and read so much about the “present moment” over many decades and wonderful books from Be Here Now to The Power of Now. Like a mind-medicine, future worries and ruminations on the past can disappear into the present moment. Yet, for many of us, that good old ever-present present moment is so very elusive, so slippery. Let’s take a closer look to find out why.
We do, after all, encounter lots of moments; those discrete segments of sensation, perception, emotion or thought. But how do we stay with them? We might, as some suggest, soft-label those moments like “itching” (sensation-perception) or “planning” (thought). Gently noting these moments helps tame a jack-rabbit mind. It helps herd and tether the ox. Note…note…note…it is like knocking on a door with just a peek inside at the present moment, before it disappears. Trying to note oneself into the present may become frustrating–we no sooner note a present moment, before we discover that it has vanished into the past. Dang!
Still, the sensate focus seems to initiate at least a brief experience of here/now, and is welcome respite from past and future preoccupations. But there are challenges. Noting sounds, audition, can seem to reveal discrete experiences of the present in the form of a burp after a big sip or a clap of thunder. It’s tempting to call those moments the present, but difficult to categorize them as such when we ponder the beer drinker’s long-winded belch or echoing thunder across a stormy sky. Are these prolonged sensations some kind of prolonged “moment”? And what about the meditation bell and its euphonious, pealing ring? More complicated yet are long-lingering sights and smells and tactile-kinesthetics-not exactly momentary. As we have discovered, these are moments quite impermanent.
Sensation may be an entryway to the present, but we stumble as we try to catch the moment inside. Be here now is a good start, but maybe not such a good finish. Maybe the present is so darn slippery because (even gently) grasping it in any given moment is the wrong idea. The renowned Harvard Functionalist rejected reducing mental events into discrete pieces or moments, and said that consciousness was like a stream. Try to catch that!
Thus, some have reasoned that the present moment is less a distinct and separate instant and more a continuum; that stream, a kind of flow. Positive psychologists have asserted that flow is like “being in the zone”, where the human subject becomes one with the object of doing. It is said that in certain sports, games, or creative activities, a flow state is achieved where the subjective experience of time disappears! Could it be that in the ballroom dance, or the writer’s scribbling poem, or in a long embrace there flourishes an experience (not a moment) of the present. It is said that the meditator’s quieted mind could likewise experience that flowing state. Perhaps in seeking the concrete and tangible moment of the present, we have foreclosed on the possibility of ever truly knowing it.
So be truly now and here! The connection of now and time transforms as we let go of the present moment, of analogue clock ticks, and relax into flow. Similarly, we could let go of here as place. After all, there is nowhere to go, as E. E. (ee), poet master of lower case, put it:
seeker of truth
follow no path
all paths lead where
truth is here.
Here, no path and all paths, non-located.
To sum up, the present is not a moment, it is not exactly, now and it is not exactly here. It more closely approximates something both timeless and placeless, flowing, a river–and that presents another tempting illusion: just jump in! But who jumps where? And, once “in” the river, then what? Float, swim, sink…drown?
Our metaphor breaks down because we are not in the river of the present-we are the river of the present. We are always in flow, but our misperceptions and delusions falsely tell us otherwise. We glimpse this truth in the aforementioned experiences of dancing or poeming or lovemaking or meditating. We are the stream. As the Blog Poet wrote, the present is
“nowhere not,
lost when sought”.
So lose the seeking. Lose the diver and the dive and the stream too. Let go into the present, a soundless splash.
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