The Pleasure of the Now

The only moment that really exists is the Present Moment as it is perceived by you who will read this. That’s it. The past exists only in your memory, it isn’t really there, and the future, in your imagination.

And so, what is the only goal in life, the only aim, in fine, if not to enjoy the Now as much as possible given the circumstances, the memories present, the beliefs programmed, the traumas engrained, the talents available, the awareness, etc. ?

That’s it. It’s so simple. But that is it. The only aim is to find out how to find pleasure in the Now as much as possible.

All therapies, religions, art, philosophy, science, architecture, design, EVERY SINGLE profession, theory, culture, activity that exists, is only made for us to enjoy the Now as much as possible:

Therapy? To release old memories and traumas that are filtering our view on the world and our ability to create, so that we can feel good right now;

Religions? To trust that we are taken care of by a God, safe and loved, so that we can feel good right now;

Art? To appreciate the grace of an artistic creation, so that this sense of appreciation gets us to feel good right now;

Philosophy? Science? To understand the world, find beauty in it, find patterns in it in order to come up with solutions and release the mind from certain worries, so that we can feel good right now;

Architecture? Design? To feel warm, dry, protected, and surrounded by beauty when we sleep, cook, work, make love, so that we can feel good right now;

Etc.

One of the most spread ways of not feeling good in the now for human beings is buying into the belief that “all is separate”, and therefore that “it is possible that I have less or more worth, security, power than someone else than me, therefore it is possible that I deserve less or deserve more than someone else than me”. This belief goes hand in hand with the very concept of the existence of such a thing as worth, judgment, the possibility of something being better than another, the concept of the existence of good and evil.

This belief puts every human who believes it (and every human on some level does) in a constant search, as if they needed to “do something” in order to get that worth, that approval, that confirmation.

That creates attachment to outcome: “my worth and my joy depend on the outcome of my action, on the money I make, on the accomplishments I have, on the amount of people who love me, follow me, liked my last post, on the very way someone loves me, etc, etc”.

In other words, this belief is the killer of Life.

Living the enchanted life, truly Living, living in Joy, what every human truly desires deep down after all, relies on the practice of knowing in every moment that we already are worthy, powerful, loved, safe, and acting from there, rather than acting in order to get a confirmation of our worth from the outside.

Which also means surrendering to the motions of life, the ups and the downs, in full trust that it is all meant to be exactly the way it is otherwise it would mean we believe that we should be doing something different, which means that not making something different makes us undeserving in some way. We sometimes can do something different, and sometimes must in order to change a situation, but we never should. In those moments, knowing we are worthy means we get a hunch to take a certain action to honour our comfort: close the window because it’s cold, earn some money because we want to sleep in a home that suits us. But it is not the closed window, or the acquiring of the home, that proves that we deserved it. We already knew we deserved it, and therefore we did what we had to do to get it, because we wanted it.

In writing a piece for example, a writer could decide: “I am going to sit at my computer and never stop until it’s done”, or “I’m going to set an alarm for 90 minutes, and write on this subject, and even if there is only one line that I decide to keep, it will be wonderful”.

Which one do you think will feel more in flow, ecstatic to write? Which one will end up having more creativity and fun? The one with more pressure or the one with less ?

Enjoying the present moment relies on having a destination, a goal, something to look forward to, an excuse to embark on a journey, a reason to create something (a desire of posting an article on line), and a structure defining how to get there (a table, a chair, a computer, and setting the 90 minutes alarm, maybe several times depending on the length of desired article), but also – and this is crucial – releasing the attachment to the fact of actually reaching it, or to following the exact steps of the structure as if they were mandatory rules. It is about trusting that wherever we end up being will be exactly perfect. This goes hand in hand with the fact of knowing we are already whole and worthy, and that nothing that we can do (not posting it, not earning the money, losing the job – or anything really), will take that away from us. And amazingly enough, when we do that, the outcome of what we act on always exceeds our expectations.

That is living the enchanted life. That is going from living from fear to living in Love. That is shifting into the new paradigm. That is building New Earth.

Rafaëlle