Image by dynamosquito

Today I’ve been pondering this thought: “This instant is the only time there is.”

Have you ever tried to find an instant? Have you ever dropped into the space between the past and the future? Have you ever known the only time there is?

For me, it’s hard to pinpoint. I keep finding myself preparing for it with thoughts of what should come next, and as those thoughts arise, I miss it. I experience an approximation of it; I experience what my mind tells me it thinks it is.

But when I get very still, interesting things begin to happen. Things become less solid. The body I inhabit begins to evaporate. My schedule disappears. It doesn’t last long, though. A thought comes, I attach to it, and I’m back here in memory-land.

The instant is the holy grail of mindfulness. Living only in the moment—the space between the present and the past—is the only way to experience reality as it truly is.

Most of us think we know what reality is, but what we call reality is actually our perception of reality. That’s why my ‘reality’ is different from your ‘reality’. Think about it: how could one person’s reality actually be different from someone else’s? Reality is reality. There is nothing else.

So when our experience of ‘reality’ is variable—which is most of the time for most of us—what we are actually experiencing is our perception of reality, guided entirely by our experience of the past, which dictates what we think reality should look like. When we get upset by things in our lives, it is because we think things should be different than they are. Here’s a newsflash: they aren’t.

When we are truly mindful, we do not dictate to reality how things should be. When we are truly mindful, we experience reality as it is. When we are truly mindful, we find ourselves existing solely in this moment. And when we are existing solely in this moment, everything is experienced as being perfect. Our judgments—our perceptions—are the only thing that could tell us otherwise.

So I invite you to join me in trying to drop into the instant. It’s been said that the instant is the closest approximation to eternity we can hope to experience in the physical form. So let’s find out what forever feels like!