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"Where are you rushing to young man? You're already there." -- Old Venetian Saying We've been conditioned to lean forward in time, to chase after the red balloons, the dangling carrots, the golden ring, the hottie, the soul mate, the ideal weight, the image of success. We hurry through time, afraid that we'll miss it. It's always just up ahead, that thing that always eludes your grasp. Gotta keep going so that you can keep reaching toward it. When we are goal oriented, rather than path oriented, we live in a state of chronic time sickness. We hurry distractedly through time trying to get someplace we think we see up ahead. Meanwhile, the time we are living in, the nowever, is degraded by our trying to hurry through it to get to where we think we want to be. But no matter how much we try to hurry through time, we are still always in the nowever. Our lives unfold and people, places and things all change, but it's always us in the nowever. If we are preoccupied with the current people, places and things, or the ones that we hope to find in the future, then we neglect those two constant factors -- us and the nowever. In doing so we lose the beauty and so many of the possibilities of the nowever. We also lose ourselves, and it t always diminishes life when you neglect your relationship to yourself. That's another of the problems with trying to hurry through time. When we try to travel into the future to find our image of success we forget an essential problem with travel as transformational intention. As Emerson put it, "The problem with travel is that you take yourself with you." The problem with traveling into the future is that you take yourself with you. If you rush toward your image of success, you may lose sight of what you take with you -- you. This is why so many people who achieve the image of success don't always enjoy it and sometimes self-destruct. If you are a super ambitious asshole who eventually gets to be a movie star or a financial success or whatever by ruthlessly manipulating others, you may transform the people, places and things around you but it will still be you in the nowever. And in this example, the you that is in the nowever as your one constant companion is an asshole. Hurrying through time to become more whole or to have the life you think you want doesn't work. Wholeness has to be found where it always is, within, so the more you try to chase it down by racing through linear time, the more it eludes your grasp. This is the ringwraith's path, forever seeking the Precious in the outside world, forever withering with unfulfilled desire. Trying to hurry through time to find things that forever elude your grasp can lead to depression and crushing despair. We feel defeated by life when actually we were always trying to do something that was intrinsically self-defeating. The cardboard sign and the balloons bobbing hyperkinetically in the wind were advertising a garage sale that was already over. Whatever rushes you toward the future is rushing you into a ghetto existence, an existence as empty as an expired garage sale. We need to recognize that we are already there and stop rushing through time. Work with what is going on in the moment, not what you think should be happening in the future. Fully experience where you are right now. It is empowering to assume that the moment is presenting you with what you need to work with. There may be hardships, anxieties, problems that seem insurmountable. If you are climbing a mountain at night in a winter storm than that's where you are. You are not standing on the summit of the mountain in the future; you are also not laying frozen in the bottom of a crevasse in another possible future. Right now you are reading an oracle card and having an experience of meaning with it. Consulting with an oracle is entering into a relationship with it for a period of time, usually less than an hour. Inhabit, own and recognize that relationship happening in real time, right now. Try not to outsource the meaning of this card into the future. It's not only about how you will live your life after the reading. It is about how you are living your life in the nowever. You're already there.
See also: FIre of Now Imagine Getting More Temporal Fencing and Life Fields and Kill the Time Grid and Fire up your Life If painful memories of the past are keeping you from engaging in the present see: Adhesions and Timelines of the Unconscious If focus on the future is keeping you from engaging the present see: Clocktime Metastasizes Toward 2012 See also writings on the Warrior Stance For a more conscious alternative to time management and an alternative to the modern time sickness read Time-Shifting, an article by Stephan Rechtschaffen and consider reading the book Timeshifting as well. Finally, some take nowness too far and make being in the present into a kind of religion, as if it were an answer for everything. See: Author Eckart Tolle Denounces the Power of Now
