Have you ever noticed that your experience can never be in the past or future except in the now? More accurately will be – have you ever realized that the past and future cannot be experienced?
I invite you to consider a little exploration with me. Do take notice of your seeing, smelling, touching, tasting or even hearing. They are the doorways to your “experience” for each moment; whichever doorway you are giving attention to – that is where your experience is. (The meaning “experience” is where attention is given to it.) Hence when you are attending to seeing and not giving attention to the touch, say your legs in contact with the ground, your experience for that moment is merely seeing and not the legs touching the ground. Yet, are you fully aware that the seeing can only happen in the now, not even a split second in the past or future? Do you notice you can’t “see” future or past except constantly now. Even your ability to see movement – which is a combination of the so-called past and the now is not actually seeing per se but rather memory+seeing at this now. Without perception at work in recalling each moment, your seeing “now” has no meaning of movement except what it sees now. In other words, if one’s memory does not function at all, 100% unworkable, one will be transported into a dimension of total forgetfulness – not truly forgetful as the meaning of forgetfulness does not even arise since there is no past for him to “forget”, not to mention remember.
Similarly if one has no ability to imagine, to mean the function of perceiving the future, one will be in a limbo of simply now all the time, without the future or past haunting him. Hmm… wonder what will it be like? Past or future is simply the work of perception – an imaginary experience that is constantly occurring in the Now. You have never left the now, nor will you be escaping from the now, at all. Can you? Even when you are asleep and dreaming, the experience is constantly now, in whatever experience you are in, albeit merely a dream unbeknownst to you until you wake up from it. Even that is memory working when you realize it was just a dream. Bizarre isn’t it? Now don’t try to think I am a weirdo to figure out this concept as it is not something that you can think about except to realize. And to substantiate my realization, even quantum physics does have proof that the world “out there” does not truly exist – strangely, it was found there is no “out there” except a projection of the mind! If it is merely a projection, where then is realness of past and future, except the now? But wait a minute, if past and future is imaginary, what then about “Now”, you may question?
Is “now” too imaginary? I will leave this to your own realization – if “now” is so-called “middle” of both past and future – where will there be middle if there are no both ends to substantiate it? So is there a “now” without both ends of past and future coming into equation since they are all but imagination of perception in the now? Happy realizing!