The Value of NOW

In my early college years, I often mused over the thought that “Today is Yesterday’s Tomorrow.”  Now while exploring implications of the principle of Better Endings for creative re-visioning, this phrase has come back into the foreground for my understanding.

It is a truism that yesterday’s future is where you stand/ think/ act today.  As well though, consider:  When you have a memory of a “past” event, this memory is transpiring in your mind’s eye only NOW, filtered through your reflection and projection in the present moment.  As your consciousness changes, so does your view of the past, coloring a memory and recasting it in the present moment.

We rescript our life story and hence our personal reality moment by moment, day by day.

Likewise, when you conceive of or envision a “future” condition or action, this visualization is occurring in your mind’s eye right NOW, also as a projection from your immediate-present waking awareness (or in your dream awareness: when you dream of a future or a past event, the dream is still occurring NOW). 

The future has no reality apart from our projections about it, for as soon as the next day or another moment arrives, it is NOW.

As well, your anticipations or expectations about “future” events are multiplex; you may envision a wide array of possible or probable outcomes of present conditions, yet these can unfold only as a future-NOW event. 

The future, as a mere projection from our current outlook, exists as a potentially infinite array of possibilities limited primarily by the constraints we impose as determined by our present state of bias or beliefs.

The simple fact, then, that Tomorrow’s Yesterday is Today carries great value; this is the value, the amazing potential, of NOW.

images are from pixabay.com

Below is a Better Endings Seed, a visualization exercise that you may use for journaling or contemplation:

What’s Coming Up for you Tomorrow, and how may it be influenced by aspects of the thought world you inhabit Today? 

If you desire to improve your Tomorrow, how might you tweak your prospective outlook today?

An easy way to apply this Better Endings visualization technique is to make a list of some of what you expect to do or aim to accomplish tomorrow. THEN: ADD ONE NEW ELEMENT that will make your tomorrow more exciting or more creatively productive. Add ONE THING that will propel you forward Tomorrow in a different, more progressive direction.

Please feel free to Comment about the results of this thought experiment!

Are You a Threshold Dweller?

One of the greatest benefits from identifying the Life Chapters of your Life Story by naming the phases that have occurred BETWEEN your pivotal Turning Points is that this brings you naturally to a position of being a Dweller at the Threshold, in Joseph Campbell’s terms (as in The Hero with 1000 Faces).  We each live always in the Present Moment, most often as if the Present is a bubble, like the bubble in a leveling tool, relatively sealed off from yet positionally linked to Past influences and Future potentials. Life Mapping can open your awareness to how the “Past” (i.e., your meaningful Life Chapters with their inherent Life Lessons) has carried you to both this Present Moment and to the potential “Future” that your Life Path is trending toward. Your mindful awareness places you at the precipice of embarking upon or unfolding more consciously into a future Moment of your own choice and envisioning; see?

If we are to constructively affect the course our life is taking—and I personally believe this is not only our right but our responsibility—we may step forward from this Threshold of awareness that links Past-PRESENT-Future into a more integrated Whole.

Being a Dweller at the Threshold, you have the opportunity to pause and to reflect; to scan the Past while envisioning the future course you desire to undertake in your continuing Adventure.  There will be another, big step to take after this, called Crossing the Threshold (stay tuned for later tools and for the Life Paths book to engage in the full process). But at this fertile, vital junction of  reviewing your life course to Now, you are able to discern meaningful trends and potentials you have already established in your unique Life Story.

I have observed in over a decade of helping people compose and reflect upon their Life Maps a very common trend. However difficult a person’s life may have been, a high percentage of people (not all) reconstruct their CURRENT Life Chapter as either at a state of Balance or as a Resolution stage after successfully negotiating earlier hardships and challenges. How about you? If you have named your Life Chapters based on the methods shared on Tuesday, what title have you given to the CURRENT Life Chapter you are in? I welcome your sharing about your own Life Chapter titles or experience.

Next week we will expand this discussion to the topic of “Life Story Genres”.  This might help you to contextualize the dramatic quality of your personal life experience.  It is a natural cognitive function of the human mind to reconstruct our life experiences in Story form. Neuroscientists believe this helps us establish a sense of coherence and “flow” to our stream of life events and it helps us to construe our sense of identity as a continuous, integrated Self. So, please stay tuned to Sunday for an introduction of our next topic of discovering your Life Story Genre.

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I’d like to add two remarks today. First, I’d like to express my gratitude to GraphicStock, the website at which I have found most of the images I use in this blog. For an annual fee I have discovered a rich well of images to represent the ideas being presented here.

Also, as it is Thursday and I’m mounting the Friday blog, as usual I am a day ahead in posting. (When I receive a story about applying these tools or find a very appropriate piece to re-blog, I will also post a separate Thursday blog, as happened last week.) My work schedule makes it easier for me to post in the afternoon or evening the day before a post is scheduled, so thanks to you, dear readers, for your patience. – Linda

The Future from Here-Now

Tomorrow depends on today and on the ripples from the past that we allow to affect us in this present Moment, which many spiritual approaches would say is all there IS: Now-Be-Here. John Thomas Dodds expressed a satisfaction with the Present that illuminates the Allness of this awareness quite nicely when he replied to yesterday’s query about What is Your Bliss? finding that his Bliss is exactly what he is already experiencing, Here-Now:

        It’s simple: being exactly where I am right at this very moment, typing these words with love and beauty surrounding me in joy.

        Being where I’ve always wanted to be, with who I always wanted to be with, oh yes, of course, four cats playing in the garden.

That all that IS is complete in the Now can also be seen as a Paradox. Everything exists Now, yet through our memories and our future projection faculties, yesterday is Here and Now when we focus our spotlight of attention upon an elapsed moment, as is a Future potential Here and Now when we view it from the viewpoint of this eternal Present. This means simply that past-present-future is a seamless Whole and all three are inseparably interconnected. The more aware we are of conditions and influences from the Past and in the Present, the better able we are to manifest a future reality state, as it were,  based on consciously chosen values and experiences. You need not simply roll along on the waves to accept “whatever comes”.  You have the capacity to choose and to plan as needed to create the life conditions you desire to express. That is why the motto or ‘tagline’ for the approach to Life Mapping I’ve been developing and sharing with life coaching is: “Live Your Dream, Now!”

 

For Tuesday’s Better Endings prompts list this week, then, around the topic of manifesting Your Life Dream, I offer the following topics:

• Where I am headed as things stand today?
• What do I want in my future that is not present in my life today?
• What shall I carry forward?
• Where to from Here?
• My Life Dream is:
• A Sea Change (then, now or future)
• Stuck patterns; what can I do?
• How might I integrate my future values here and now?
• Inner conflicts about my future prospects (This can be in the form of an Archetypal Dialogue.)
• The plus factor; what I would add/change/modify if I could (and, how)
• At a crossroads/ Multiple paths forward (reflect)
• At the Threshold (What do I see from Here-Now as I look ahead?);  what is around the bend?)
• Threshold Guardians (What factors or self-limiting thoughts appear to block my going forward?)
• Crossing the Threshold
• “Going Home”

I invite you to choose one or more of the above prompts (or use your own) to write about, contemplate/meditate upon, talk about, and or to share about with us here, expressing your insights or stories.