Philosophy Of The Present Moment

[lilacwest]

The last couple days I'm having some trouble with this "philosophy" that the present moment is all there is. That the past and future are only illusions.

Never mind the fact that in this present moment, I'm at my desk at home tying here on the Forum, and in some other present moment, I'm going to be sitting at my desk at work. I can kind of wrap my head around that.

What's getting to me philosophically is if there is only the present moment, and no other moments, why am I not just enlightened right now? If we only can be enlightened in the present moment, shouldn't I already be enlightened? If there is only one moment, why do I experience two utterly different states of mind - ego mind currently, and enlightenment.....ah in the future? It's the only way I can picture it since I am not enlightened now.

Am I making sense?

[FindingPeace]

I think I understand, although I'm not sure I can articulate an answer..

The past and future are illusions because they only exist within our memory and imagination. In fact our concept of the future depends on our memory of the past otherwise we have no point of reference to even conceive a future.. this has actually been proven with people who have memory problems. With no memory of the past one can have no concept of the future. Strange but true..

The problem with our species is that we spend so much of our time 'in our own heads' - running thought-stories and simulations of the past and future as well as abstract fantasies and musings. Becomming mindful is about getting out of our heads and into the present moment. Easier said than done. Even as we take in our present-moment surroundings and practice mindfulness we are still compartmentalising and labeling everything via our ingrained system of beliefs, world-view, knowledge etc. We still see from the place of the ego.

We can only assume what it is like to be completely enlightened. But my understanding is that the key is shedding the ego, the concept of 'self' so that we perceive reality in the present moment without the fog of our ingrained 'mental filter' telling us stories and creating labels.

 

[Giorgia Andriani]

Enlightenment doesn't mean being in this moment as in just inhaling and exhaling. You are not enlightened because you're there. There's a process to be done that makes you become enlightened.

What helps me when I work on enlightenment is to repeat to myself that there's no self and there's no Giorgia as an entity... And just by repeating it again and again I transcend myself and I feel part of the everything around me. 

You need to take in the concept that there's no you if you want to reach a deep status of consciousness. There's just the raw reality without the filter that your mind puts on it! And you become the nothing and the everything at the same time...

You see everything from the ego POV as you said.. But what about if you repeat to yourself that there's no ego who is seeing? 

Suggest you to try! The more you do that, the longer your status of deep consciousness is going to last! 

Cheerio

 

 

[Rito]

I think to truly wrap your head around this you need to practice mindfulness meditation and be generally mindful in your approach towards everything.The Past and the Future are constructs of your ego.When you can truly dwell in the present 24*7 all your life's problems are going to disappear slowly and you will feel infinite bliss

[Guest]

First of all there is no past or future in reality. They are not exist, or just exist in our brains. Future consists of imaginations which is worst than past.

What you only have is present. If you know you're now in the present moment you're not enlightened. But if you will be in the present moment always no matter what. You're enlightened.

[Ludwig]

Yes, there is no past and future. Ultimately speaking. But there is no present moment either. For having a present there must be something that isn't present. When is this present moment you are speaking off? Now? Or what about now? Only mind can live in such a thing. A present moment is only there when there is someone to live in it. Is there? See for yourself.

[FindingPeace]

20 hours ago, Ludwig said:

Yes, there is no past and future. Ultimately speaking. But there is no present moment either. For having a present there must be something that isn't present. When is this present moment you are speaking off? Now? Or what about now? Only mind can live in such a thing. A present moment is only there when there is someone to live in it. Is there? See for yourself.

This got me thinking and I started to explore the concepts of the 'present moment' and time itself. Some realisations hit me. There is a profound truth in the statement "A present moment is only there when there is someone to live in it", or more to the point, when there is something to perceive it.

I appologise if this gets deep..

The fact is, by the time our brain (or any brain or system) has received the sensory information and 'made sense' of it, the moment has already passed. There is a delay. So the present moment we perceive is always lagging by a fraction. Also, it is the speed at which we can process and make sense of the stream of sensory information that creates the perception of time.

Smaller animals with smaller brains tend to have much faster perception and reactions. Why? It is beleived that in smaller neural systems signals travel faster (less distance to cover) so they can perceive time more slowly and hense create faster reactions to the sensory input. This is why it is so hard to swat a fly even though it appears to us that we are swinging our arm really fast. Yet to the fly, it still has time to casually finish pollishing it's eyes and smoothing it's wings before taking off at the last  moment and evading the impending hand. To the fly the perception of time is very different (our actions seem extremely slow) and so the present moment to the fly is different to the present moment we are experiencing.

I imagine the 'present moment' as a continuous 'burst' of sensory moments that our brains create some perception out of and also create the sense of time.

Interestingly, when we are unconscious, maybe in deep sleep, under general anasthetic, coma, passed out or even dead, there is no perceiving, no present moment and  no perception of time. Infact there is no time. If there is no conscious awareness then there is no present moment or passage of time at all. You could be put unconscious today, and awakened in 1000 years and you would have no sense of the passing of time. It would feel like seconds or minutes. Which brings in to question the whole concept of time - it has no speed, or measurement. In fact, it may well be infinite, instantaneous. What is time anyway? Just the perception of passing, more importantly changing, events - if everything was static there would, in theory, be no passage of time.

Billions of years passed from the beginning of the universe to when you became a conscious life-form. That time passed in an instant. Then, while you are experiencing conscious awarness and perception, time (events) seems to take on a 'speed', except during periods of unconsciousness when it return to being instantaneous. Then, once you die and stop perceiving permanently, the rest of eternity will play out in an instant.

It occurs to me that the perception of passage of time is in itself just a manifestion of our conscious awareness and as such the concept of the 'present moment' is aswel. In reality there is no present moment because in order to have a 'moment'  a moment has to have duration. How long is the present moment? It isn't any length. It is only a perception in itself.

Weirder and weirder... ultimately, reality isn't anything like what we think we know about it. It is weirder than we can possible imagine. It's unlikely we even have the mental capacity to understand it. In fact, as we are a part of reality that is like saying that reality can't comprehend itself. The system can't comprehend the system because it is the system. A paradox. In any case, what is comprehension? A concept? Concepts within concepts within concepts.... If there were no brains to conceptualise then there would be absolute reality just as it is without any understanding or knowledge or questions or present moments or even passage of time..

Sorry, got carried away...will leave it there!

 

 

[30secs]

our present reality is filtered by our ego 'self' , if you get rid of the ego that's real "now". But it's not easy to destroy your ego, you need years of consciousness work. I think its the most worthy thing to do !

[Kelley White]

On 2/12/2016 at 5:22 AM, lilacwest said:

The last couple days I'm having some trouble with this "philosophy" that the present moment is all there is. That the past and future are only illusions.

Never mind the fact that in this present moment, I'm at my desk at home tying here on the Forum, and in some other present moment, I'm going to be sitting at my desk at work. I can kind of wrap my head around that.

What's getting to me philosophically is if there is only the present moment, and no other moments, why am I not just enlightened right now? If we only can be enlightened in the present moment, shouldn't I already be enlightened? If there is only one moment, why do I experience two utterly different states of mind - ego mind currently, and enlightenment.....ah in the future? It's the only way I can picture it since I am not enlightened now.

Am I making sense?

Here's the story I like to use as a metaphor for what you are observing and writing about above; time travel. 

You are now a being (I like to say artificial intelligence carbon unit) at a desk. 

A thought comes from this dimension" we label "past." 

We can choose to say what an (?) thought?  Let it go... OR?  We can use to chase that rabbit by giving it our focus.  

That focus?  Can evoke sensation which appears to stimulate emotion which prompts observation, processing, and assimilation of the stimulus as experience into a framework for organizing, making sense, understanding.   (Our preconceived notions, worldview.)

Now this  dimension of "the past?" It just became your "now."  

You time traveled while at your desk to a past dimension and made it real in your present dimension.   Make sense so far? 

At that moment you are a shape-shifter time-traveling,  shifting emotion, form of thought, action; based upon being in the past dimension while attempting to function in the present dimension.  

Want to time travel to the future?  Just do the same process only focus on the "future" dimension.   Time travel is never linear.   Sometimes you may find yourself in multiple dimensions in one now.

When time traveling, one rarely travels alone, so one might include an entire cast of characters on one's internal journey and then react to them in the now based upon past or future virtual adventures which only occurred in your own awareness.  Isn't that fun?

When you add the virtual online realities to the reality of physical reality, you are now a time traveler within multiple dimensions of space-time.   You are now capable of being in more than one space-time continuum at the same time!  Congratulations!  You are a master time traveler. 

Of course we made all of this up?  So I am wholly just creating a different let's pretend to explain this to you.   Really? We are everywhere and nowhere all at once, one, now.   The art of science, life unfolding.   Or not?

[Henri]

The present moment is vast and deep. 

It contains the past and the present.

It is limitless like the sky, like your consciousness.

To be still and established in this is liberation.

[Ayla]

@lilacwest , somehow your mind is thinking of the present moment as a stuckness into a (let's call it) position on a linear time (past ----------->>>----future). 

In your mind, there needs to be time between point A (being at your desk) and point B (going home). This is how brain is setup to function, and you are taking this "rule" to be you. 

This is one of the hugest traps I've encountered at one point too. The best idea I can associate this with, is that you are already enlightened, but your concept of time is the veil that keeps you from realizing it. With the aid of concept of time, consciousness has produced a "thingie" that you take as being you right now... 

 

[Galyna]

On 2/15/2016 at 3:11 AM, FindingPeace said:

This got me thinking and I started to explore the concepts of the 'present moment' and time itself. Some realisations hit me. There is a profound truth in the statement "A present moment is only there when there is someone to live in it", or more to the point, when there is something to perceive it.

I appologise if this gets deep..

The fact is, by the time our brain (or any brain or system) has received the sensory information and 'made sense' of it, the moment has already passed. There is a delay. So the present moment we perceive is always lagging by a fraction. Also, it is the speed at which we can process and make sense of the stream of sensory information that creates the perception of time.

Smaller animals with smaller brains tend to have much faster perception and reactions. Why? It is beleived that in smaller neural systems signals travel faster (less distance to cover) so they can perceive time more slowly and hense create faster reactions to the sensory input. This is why it is so hard to swat a fly even though it appears to us that we are swinging our arm really fast. Yet to the fly, it still has time to casually finish pollishing it's eyes and smoothing it's wings before taking off at the last  moment and evading the impending hand. To the fly the perception of time is very different (our actions seem extremely slow) and so the present moment to the fly is different to the present moment we are experiencing.

I imagine the 'present moment' as a continuous 'burst' of sensory moments that our brains create some perception out of and also create the sense of time.

Interestingly, when we are unconscious, maybe in deep sleep, under general anasthetic, coma, passed out or even dead, there is no perceiving, no present moment and  no perception of time. Infact there is no time. If there is no conscious awareness then there is no present moment or passage of time at all. You could be put unconscious today, and awakened in 1000 years and you would have no sense of the passing of time. It would feel like seconds or minutes. Which brings in to question the whole concept of time - it has no speed, or measurement. In fact, it may well be infinite, instantaneous. What is time anyway? Just the perception of passing, more importantly changing, events - if everything was static there would, in theory, be no passage of time.

Billions of years passed from the beginning of the universe to when you became a conscious life-form. That time passed in an instant. Then, while you are experiencing conscious awarness and perception, time (events) seems to take on a 'speed', except during periods of unconsciousness when it return to being instantaneous. Then, once you die and stop perceiving permanently, the rest of eternity will play out in an instant.

It occurs to me that the perception of passage of time is in itself just a manifestion of our conscious awareness and as such the concept of the 'present moment' is aswel. In reality there is no present moment because in order to have a 'moment'  a moment has to have duration. How long is the present moment? It isn't any length. It is only a perception in itself.

Weirder and weirder... ultimately, reality isn't anything like what we think we know about it. It is weirder than we can possible imagine. It's unlikely we even have the mental capacity to understand it. In fact, as we are a part of reality that is like saying that reality can't comprehend itself. The system can't comprehend the system because it is the system. A paradox. In any case, what is comprehension? A concept? Concepts within concepts within concepts.... If there were no brains to conceptualise then there would be absolute reality just as it is without any understanding or knowledge or questions or present moments or even passage of time..

Sorry, got carried away...will leave it there!

 

 

Dear FindingPeace,

That is the most profound explanation I have ever heard. Thank you so so so so much.

 

Edited March 5, 2016 by Galyna

[Galyna]

Guys. I really like this documentary video

I guess I saw it today on the Forum as well.....

 

 

[vizual]

The present is just as much an illusion as past and future

[lilacwest]

Thanks everyone for your thoughts and comments. I haven't been on the forum for awhile, have been depressed, and also it was messing with my head too much to think of the past and future as illusions. It still does, and I may elaborate on that later.

For now, I want to say @FindingPeace wow that actually is really deep and makes a lot of sense! Thank you!