reaction paper 7

In The Power of Now, the author reiterates something that we have seen before, which is that our mind and our consciousness are not what makes us us, and thus that we should strive to liberate ourselves from our mind, and be a watcher instead, in order to reach enlightenment.  The author also explores the issues of pain and of the demands of the ego. Once you understand these concepts, the author claims that you can start the process of detachment and dive into the Now. What he means by this is that once you let go of those things, problems that plague us linked to past and future cease to matter, and the only thing that matters is the exact instant they you’re living. You can live with your mind and not be bothered by it. The first way to do that is to separate the mind from the concept of time, which is the main factor that pushes us to constantly relive past memories and to constantly worry about the future. Once the concept of time is disregarded, those worries cease to exist as well.

The author explains that the Now is the only state that we will ever experience. We can never be outside the Now. The past and the future are illusions, they do not exist, the only thing that exists is the Now.

I think that as students, this is very interesting to read and think about, because our main purpose in life and the main reason we study, live and pay for university education is so that we can prepare for the future. The author basically says that the future we are preparing for does not exist.

I know that the concept of time is an illusion, and was basically created by man. However, I wonder what the world would look like if the concept of time did not exist. I think it would be very chaotic, but then again, as the author argues that it is actually one of the main sources of our problems, it might have been nice to live like most animals who don’t know what time is, who do not comprehend the concept of the future and the concept of death. A lot of people’s anxieties would certainly disappear.

I honestly have a hard time comprehending how the author, and the other authors we have heard from, can succeed in going beyond their minds and reaching the states they talk about. I know they did not get there overnight, or during the course of a semester, but it still seems so unfeasible to me to reach that state of consciousness and awareness. But the possibility of it still fascinates me.