A Meditation on Now-ness

Where are you right now? I don’t mean a location, but rather where are you consciously right this very moment?

Recently, while climbing on holiday, I had time to ponder about the nature of my own existence; in particular, whom it is I think I am. I have often asked the same question of others while miffed about something or other but this time I flipped the rhetorical question on myself, “Who do you think you are?”

Philosophically speaking, I first think of what makes up the personality; our sensibilities, strengths, weaknesses, notions of progress, change, relapses etc.  Some would say that we are what we do, or some accumulation of that which thoughts and deeds, habits and conditioning have wrought upon us. It is the idea that who we are fundamentally stems from these series of conditions that doesn’t quite ring true. It is certain that our personal histories shape who we are, but what is at the center of this shape? Just like mathematics tries to define a surface or an object by defining its boundaries and dimensions, are we, in essence, the boundary conditions that help define us? By drawing lines and making shapes you, in a sense, create two ways for viewing the object; one by describing the framework of the object, and two, by delineating the framework from what it contains.  Using this approach it is easy to understand one side of the nature of the object without speaking to the other, the essence of what the object truly is, what the object contains.

Consider the nature of matter for example. A solid object has shape, mass, temperature, and is a conglomeration of smaller objects. This larger object is a sort of macrocosm of these smaller objects. Zoom in and we have a chemical compound that makes up the larger object as a piece of the whole.  Zoom in further and there is an atom that makes up the chemical compound. Further in, an atom is made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Further still and these building blocks have their own building blocks, quarks leptons, and bosons. What exists in between all of these particles? Space? And if we continue to delve into the rabbit hole, at what point can we speak to the essence of being rather than the shapes and functions of the framework that define it?

Now apply this same line of reasoning to the self. Thoughts, deeds, habits, physical form etc. are just boundary conditions or limits that describe the object but merely bind the essence without actually speaking to it’s quality. Our being, it seems, is a microcosm of the macro universe described by the geometry of the physical only giving shape to the metaphysical without robbing it of its own ability, or agency, to define itself.

For lack of a better culprit, our consciousness is in essence who we are. It is not the thoughts that we think but rather out ability to think them that separates us from ourselves. Our consciousness is like water, free flowing and form fitting. In just the same way that our persona forms our consciousness by creating boundaries, our consciousness pushes back creating a reciprocal force I will label as focus. Focus is the muscle of the consciousness, or the tool for which is asserts its agency. Our focus gives direction to our consciousness. Or rather our focus is the malleable dish that holds the fluid of our consciousness. The characteristics of our focus give shape and form qualitatively to our thoughts and, thusly, our being molds to fit those thoughts in the present moment, defining who we are in the moment those thoughts are conceived.

Understanding this frees us to shape our own being by asserting our focus mindfully and continuously. Over time the patterns of our persona begin to mold themselves to the shape our mindfulness has created. This occurs in a process similar to the shaping of mountains and canyons, whose rock is hard and unyielding, by water, which is fluid and malleable.

There is only now. Even the thought of the future is a memory of what you thought a moment ago. Inevitably the future comes, however, in the form of Right Now. Be here now. You are only what you focus on in the present moment. The past has lost its permanence through mindfulness, and the future is just an illusion of memory.

Where are you right now, where are you consciously right this very moment?