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- 🧘♂️ The Power of Now
Hey guys! 👋 I hope you've had a fantastic week. Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that for the next month, I’ll be trialing a referral program. You can collect rewards by referring your friends to my email newsletter, and if they join, you get free stuff - it’s that simple 🙂 If this works well, I may keep it on for longer.
Now for today’s piece..
Interestingly, this week I've found myself contemplating the future more often and counting down to upcoming events (often holidays that are in the plans). I'm not entirely sure why, but it might be related to the fact that I'm now fully settled into psychiatry, and the workload has taken on a slightly monotonous rhythm (wake up, see 2-3 patients in the clinic, spend 2 hours documenting assessments in the notes, then head home).
While there's nothing wrong with looking ahead to the future or occasionally reflecting on the past, I've noticed that this mindset tends to rob the joy from the small, pleasurable moments that can unfold throughout my day. If only I could remain fully present in each of these moments. This realization prompted me to revisit one of my all-time favorite books this morning: "The Power of Now." My hope was to re-ground myself in the present moment and thereby retain the happiness it brings.
"The Power of Now" is an incredible spiritual guidebook that underscores the significance of living in the present to discover inner peace and enlightenment. The book delves into the idea that releasing past regrets and future anxieties can pave the way for a more enriching and conscious existence. Here are some of the best quotes from the book that I believe will bring value to your day:
To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and future are considered important. This total reversal of the truth accounts for the fact that in the ego mode the mind is so dysfunctional. It is always concerned with keeping the past alive, because without it - who are you? It constantly projects itself into the future to ensure its continued survival and to seek some kind of release or fulfillment there. It says: "One day, when this, that, or the other happens, I am going to be okay, happy, at peace." Even when the ego seems to be concerned with the present, it is not the present that it sees: It misperceives it completely because it looks at it through the eyes of the past. Or it reduces the present to a means to an end, an end that always lies in the mind-projected future.
The mind always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it. In other words, the more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer. Or you may put it like this: the more you are able to honor and accept the Now, the more you are free of pain, of suffering -- and free of the egoic mind.
If you no longer want to create pain for yourself and others, if you no longer want to add to the residue of past pain that still lives on in you, then don't create any more time, or at least no more than is necessary to deal with the practical aspects of your life. How to stop creating time? Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life. Whereas before you dwelt in time and paid brief visits to the Now, have your dwelling place in the Now and pay brief visits to past and future when required to deal with the practical aspects of your life situation. Always say "yes" to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to something that already is? What could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say "yes" to life -- and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.
Why does the mind habitually deny or resist the Now? Because it cannot function and remain in control without time, which is past and future, so it perceives the timeless Now as threatening. Time and mind are in fact inseparable.
The psychological condition of fear is divorced from any concrete and true immediate danger. It comes in many forms: unease, worry, anxiety, nervousness, tension, dread, phobia, and so on. This kind of psychological fear is always of something that might happen, not of something that is happening now. You are in the here and now, while your mind is in the future. This creates an anxiety gap. And if you are identified with your mind and have lost touch with the power and simplicity of the Now, that anxiety gap will be your constant companion. You can always cope with the present moment, but you cannot cope with something that is only a mind projection -- you cannot cope with the future.
To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation. This creates an endless preoccupation with past and future and an unwillingness to honor and acknowledge the present moment and allow it to be. The compulsion arises because the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment.
Have you ever experienced, done, thought, or felt anything outside the Now? Do you think you ever will? Is it possible for anything to happen or be outside the Now? The answer is obvious, is it not? Nothing ever happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now. What you think of as the past is a memory trace, stored in the mind, of a former Now. When you remember the past, you reactivate a memory trace -- and you do so now. The future is an imagined Now, a projection of the mind. When the future comes, it comes as the Now. When you think about the future, you do it now. Past and future obviously have no reality of their own. Just as the moon has no light of its own, but can only reflect the light of the sun, so are past and future only pale reflections of the light, power, and reality of the eternal present. Their reality is "borrowed" from the Now.
If you’re into reading, I highly recommend you give The Power of Now a read. It will change your life!
👍🏾 Things I’ve enjoyed this week
Hogwarts Legacy (game) - I bought this second-hand on eBay after eyeing it for a while now. I’ve only played about 4 hours of it so far, but it’s giving me so much nostalgia running around the castle doing different quests. Highly recommend if you are a gamer!
Wired earphones (tech) - So I usually use my Airpods Pro on a daily basis, but a few times now I have gone to work and forgotten them charging on my night stand, which is incredibly furstrating. To take away this issue, I ordered a pair of wired earphones to have in my work bag so that I never go without being able to listen to music whilst I work. Problem solved!
Influencer (movie) - Great thriller that will have you on your toes. Highly recommend!
📚 Highlight of the week
“One of the simplest ways to win is to always connect the small things you do to the larger thing you hope to accomplish. Five minutes can be spent working on something trivial or working on something life-changing. A brief session of work oriented toward a great cause is always time well spent. Most daily actions evaporate. Some accumulate.”
"People often think that something "far off" will make them happy. That moving to a new place or getting a different job or meeting someone new will change how they feel. But happiness will always be withheld if you believe it is somewhere else. The secret is to find happiness in the people and places that are close to you. See the beauty in the things that are nearby."
You have the power to create. Your power is so strong that whatever you believe comes true. You create yourself, whatever you believe you are. You are the way you are because that is what you believe about yourself. Your whole reality, everything you believe, is your creation. You have the same power as any other human in the world. The main difference between you and someone else is how you apply your power, what you create with your power. You may be similar to others in many ways, but no one in the whole world lives her life the way you do.
Resurfaced to me by Readwise
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