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Eckhart Tolle’s brilliant book The Power of Now argues compellingly that the only thing that really exists, at all, is the thing we experience as “right now,” this moment. I think this book is insightful, and on one level I completely agree with him.

The power of being able to focus on our experience of this present moment and ask, “what’s happening right now” is one of the basic building blocks of spiritual practice, like tires on a bicycle. You can’t leave home, on some level, without starting there.

On another level, there’s more to “right now” than meets the eye. We could access, and experience, all the moments that have ever existed, and all those that will exist, as “right now” if we were not such limited creatures, if we weren’t restricted to experiencing time one thin slice at a time.

We experience time in a linear fashion, but this is mostly because we are extremely limited beings, not because time actually works that way. Einstein theorized, and others have proven on small scales, that time isn’t constant; it doesn’t run from left to right the way we experience it. Time is more of a perception than a reality. In the same way that someone might perceive a person as ‘witty’ and another might perceive the same person as ‘caustic,’ time depends on the condition and viewpoint of the observer.

But you don’t need to be an Einstein to understand this. There are non-scientific, intuitive ways of identifying this experience in everyday life. Any of you who have dabbled in western psychotherapy are familiar with the concept of your “inner child,” that part of you aged 2, 5, 9, 12 which is still very much “alive” today, driving your sense of “I need,” making you blurt out things you wish you hadn’t said to your boss, driving you from within. To say that we simply “remember” that child is not quite accurate; that child is real in every sense of the word. That child is showing up right now.

Our past is happening right now, and so is our future. Any of you familiar with sports psychology or books like The Inner Game of Tennis know that when we can visualize (fantasize) hitting a tennis ball or a golf ball in some particular way, clearly, compellingly, when we can see it successfully in the mind before we hit the ball, inner reality becomes outer reality; we create the present by doing fantasy work in the future. The reality of the future we were able to create in our fantasy manifests as “right now” just a few moments later. And then it quickly turns into our past, a memory of what happened.

What I am about to write may sound strange, but I feel quite certain it is true because I have experienced it, physically, dozens and dozens of times while holding men in Touch Practice:

• “Right now” is reality as it aligns with your personal perception of time, as you experience it in your physical body. We sample one thin slice of time at a time, like the second-hand sweeping over the face of the clock. The whole clock exists all the time, but you only get to experience the slice that the second-hand is passing over at any given moment. What we call “right now” could also be thought of as, ” the thing that my second-hand is passing over currently.” “Right now” describes the limit of what you are able to perceive, not what’s actually happening. You’re actually the whole clock, not just the second-hand.
• “Memory” is also reality, every bit as much, and it is a reality that is also happening right now. Memory aligns with your personal perception of “my second-hand passed over that once, but isn’t any there any longer.”
• “Fantasy” is also reality, and it is also something that is happening in a real way right now. Fantasy (or visualization, or imagination, or whatever you want to call it) aligns with a personal perception of “my second-hand hasn’t gotten there yet” or “I haven’t experienced that ‘now’ yet.”

There is no difference–none–in the relative impact of “right now,” “what happened to me,” and “what I fantasize.”  These are all completely real, equally powerful expressions of our experience.

When I work with men in Touch Practice, we work in all time zones. We sit with each other physically in the here and now, of course, but very often a man will relax and regress to the point that I can hold the six-year-old or ten-year-old piece of him, a piece which shows up in a very real way–I can feel it in the physical body, in the shape and tone of the body (my term for it is “puppy body.”)

Equally, I have witnessed a man become a creature he has not yet experienced, not in his past and not in the present–someone who feels lovable and beautiful and open in a way that he has not been able to experience in the past. I hear on a regular basis from people who walk into that future, people who write me after a workshop or individual work to say, “Touch Practice opened me up to imagining what it would feel like to carry myself that way, to be safe and happy in my body, huggable, touchable. Once I could feel what it felt like in my body, it was easy. I just walked into it.”  You could think of it as “The Inner Game of Body.”

Skeptical? Let me give you some easy examples of how we already work in all three time zones, although not always very skillfully.

A man has a grudge against his mother from something that happened when he was 14-16. The guy is in his 40’s now. Mom’s been dead for years. He’s not able to let go of the story of “my mom let me down because _____.” He grinds it like an axe, sharpening it every day.

It colors his interactions with women, it makes him unable to trust in intimate relationships, it makes his dating life a living nightmare. His closest friends shake their heads, compassionately, and think to themselves, “Good God, why won’t he just let this story go and get on with his life?”

You think that is long gone because it happened 30 years ago? I don’t. The seemingly dead mother is very much alive, dominating his life, right here, right now. And he’s engaging her with all the skill you’d expect from a 14-16 year-old.

And here’s a kind of example we see all the time, how we form reality in the future and then move it into our “real” life, how we walk into what we’ve created. I’ve mentioned this example before:

A woman walks into a party of total strangers. She’s confident and secure, carries herself in a gracious, open, friendly way because she fully expects that people are going to find her interesting, attractive, and fun. She anticipates having a great time. When people see this gracious, open, friendly woman they can’t resist her. They wait in line to talk to her. Her party is exactly as she expected it to be, full of delightful people who made interesting conversation with her.

Another woman, equal on any objective scale of physical attractiveness, walks into the same party insecure, nervous, suspicious, bracing herself against her disappointment before she even arrives. She has a slight frown on her face, is cautious with eye contact, stands with her arms crossed in a corner, nursing her drink, engaging efforts at conversation only grudgingly. When people see this nervous, awkward woman, they subconsciously take a step back and look for other options. Her party is exactly as she expected it to be, too, the same party, full of snobs, cliques and unfriendly people who weren’t interested in her.

Both women created their reality before they walked into it. Their experience had little to do with this particular party; it existed in a different time-realm before they got there, and they simply walked into the “now” of what they’d already created in a different time zone.

“It’s not always that simple,” you might say. I’d agree. It’s not always that simple. But often it’s astonishingly simple. More often than I ever realized.

So what’s the upshot of all of this? Three big things:

1. Tend to your fantasies. We become what we imagine. You will experience exactly what you create in your daydreams, your rants, your fantasies, and a very important type of future work: your prayers. What you do in that time zone is no less real than what you’re doing in the thing you call ‘right now.’ Really, it’s not a speck less real.

If you build a clear, convincing image there, a heaven, a hell or something in between, it will move into “right now” at some point, and you will walk into it. So as far as fantasies are concerned, let go of what you don’t want, or I promise it’ll show up at your door. And hang on to what you do want, because that’s more real than you can possibly imagine. Literally.

2. Tend to your memories. Don’t think you can keep chewing on something that happened 20 years ago, like a dog with a bone, while somehow your “actual” life is “protected” because that thing is no longer happening. It is happening, right now. You are what you cannot let go of.  Grudges are not idle pastimes; they are reality benders. Resentment about something from 10 years ago isn’t going to do a blessed thing to impact 10 years ago, but it’ll poison “right now” faster than you can blink. Work it out and move on.

And, in a positive light, you are also what you will not let go of. You can dance like a little kid in your 8-year-old body any time you want to. Don’t let the fact that you’re a 70-year-old with achy bones stop you. Your perception of time is an illusion. All of the experiences you have ever had are real in you right now. All of the experiences you haven’t had yet are real in you right now. If there’s something you wanted for your 8 year old that he missed, do it for him now–he’s still here, and it’s no less real.

3. And while you’re tending your fantasies and your memories, don’t forget to pay attention to right now. Tolle is right about that one, too.

It doesn’t matter which time zone you do your work in; it’s all real work, all of it. It all shows up on the face of your big clock regardless of where your little second hand happens to be at this particular moment in time. Touch Practice is a way of doing this work in the body, but you can do the work in your mind, your soul, or in all sorts of combinations.

Life is the whole clock, not just the second-hand. And while time is one way of viewing reality, time itself is not reality. It’s like an internet browser, a viewer we can use to access reality. Time is a powerful tool for spiritual practice and growth.

Have thoughts you’d like to share?

Touch Practice is a sacred practice for me, and part of that is keeping confidences sacred. While a name and e-mail address are required to post a comment, feel free to use just your first name, or a pseudonym if you wish. Your e-mail address will never be seen by or shared with anyone. It is used to prevent spam and inappropriate comments from appearing in the blog. I’d really like to hear from you!