The very fact of being aware of what is is truth.
It is truth that liberates, not your striving to be free.
Thus reality is not far but we place it far away
because we try to use it as a means of self-continuity.
It is here, now, in the immediate.
—J. Krishnamurti
The following has to be said very delicately. Most of us, most of the time, live immersed in what seems to be reality: I am exclusively someone long-lasting and independent who has been born in order to eventually die.
While I am alive, I must minimize the bad and maximize the good. Psychotherapy is one of the best contributors to pursuing those objectives: the listening, empathic attunement, safety, encouraging relationship, deep learning and course corrections offered in therapy are invaluable.
But we may discern, clearly or foggily, that something is missing from therapy. Putting our finger on what is missing may be very difficult. The whole therapy process seems to be going somewhere; it has goals and objectives that we reach toward in time. Change seems to be needed, and we head for therapy primarily in order to change. We hope to become happier, or at least less unhappy.
As a therapist I often wish I could be as powerful and effective an agent of change as my clients imagine I am (or hope I will be…) Change does happen—but after many years of being in my role as a therapist, I have to acknowledge with due humility that it is life itself that brings change. If I am lucky, and grace is present between us, the generous and encouraging connection between the person and myself will be supportive of change happening.
This process is completely different from fixing someone who is ‘broken.’ Perhaps one of the first things that happens in good therapy is that the person in therapy begins to have their sense of being damaged or broken dissolve, or at least begin to become less believable.
That sense, of there being “something wrong with me,” has nothing to do with the reality of the present moment that all of us live, all of the time.
In this present moment, before our judging thoughts and all the feelings accompanying them get set off, all is quite remarkably well. We may not know, in the midst of such a moment, quite who or what we are—but we can tell we, and the moment are alright. All is well, in the midst of the very moment of now.
The goals and objectives of therapy, pursued in time, don’t seem to take much account of this alright-ness. Therapy is about change, in time, and this that never leaves the center of our lives—we call it ‘now’—isn’t anything to do with time.
I would like to be wise, kind, generous, unflappable, spacious, giving, and generally a good human being, but all of these qualities, despite how we might effortfully cultivate them through therapy, mindfulness, meditation or other technologies of change, are present here now.
I can recognize that now is all I really have; that is wisdom. How things are this moment is already kindly and spontaneously welcome, before my thought process gets to work on the ‘good-or bad’ evaluation (and that evaluation is also welcomed.) Generosity toward what shows up is unlimited, and as for unflappability and spaciousness, as well as limitless giving—these are all fully apparent all the time, quite simply as the essence of now. These are all just the nature of our presence in the moment: it says “Yes.”
Perhaps we are beginning to identify what is absent, or under-emphasized in therapy, even in psychology. Therapy, quite correctly, is focused on the more-of-the-positive, and less-of-the-negative changes that can come about in time. Therapy is focused on the person, and how they can become, in time, a better person; perhaps less depressed, less anxious—even, happier. And, these changes can happen, but we may have a nagging sense that something is absent from the process.
Our dawning recognition of what may be under-emphasized, or even missing from therapy fills in what we could not earlier put our finger on. This growing awareness of what cannot be lost provides us with a place to stand that is outside the time-bound progression-to-being-a-better-person that can sometimes feel like a burden of obligation we have placed upon ourselves.
Because what if our progress in this respect is slow, or halting, or suffers reversals? What if life plays an imperative hand, and there is loss of health, or a loved one, or of a job, or if divorce happens? What if there is pregnancy, or a new baby comes, or there is disability, injury, relocation, or debt?
All of these situations, each with their own distinct vulnerabilities, can tend to trigger internal voices conveying recrimination, punishment or shame.
All of these voices will tend to sound like they are our own voice, or the voice of authority figures in our life, or the ‘peanut gallery’ or ‘shitty committee’ chorus of onlookers, judging us.
Amidst such a barrage of voices, a sense of floundering is entirely natural.
All of the voices, in different ways, point to some insufficiency, some failure, even some wrongness about ourselves as the one who lives in time—and we have learned firmly to believe that is all of who we are: a time being, born only to die.
Psychotherapy can be an excellent support during these tsunami’s of recrimination (which occur for all of us, as I personally well know.) The tendency of the voices to make us feel bad, and terribly alone can be much reduced by skillful and empathic therapy, especially if the therapist is willing to make it clear that they, too, personally know the impact of these voices (for they are universally present in our Western culture.)
Yet there is another support available to us, from the timeless dimension of ourselves; from the aspect of us that psychotherapy tends to overlook. This form of support is paradoxical in nature, for it is entirely devoid of any effort to change or to do differently.
Support in this timeless way is the recognition that life unfolds flawlessly. Whatever is happening in this moment can be no other way—and this absolutely includes the therapy-reaching-forward-in-time mode, does not exclude “I would like to change and be an improved version of myself”—and, invites our presence to be here, in this very moment, as it is happening, now. We are invited to be where we already are and cannot not be.
Describing this placeless place where all of us exist, all of the time, is impossible. Thinking isn’t of any use here, where we are completely and naturally at home, and never have not been. Thinking is the substance of time, progression and reaching-towards, but so predominant has mentation become that it camouflages the now-home we can never leave.
The ceaseless river of change that is the present moment looks, to our time-sense, like the tiniest speck of time in between the vast past and the unlimited future. But when we take the invitation of a more whole psychotherapy, and recognize there is both time and reaching-forward and the perfect present moment, all the realms of our being open up inclusively to us.
The predominant difficulties we face belong to the time being we suppose ourselves exclusively to be.
Sorrow about the past and anxiety about the future are heavy weights on us, and can seem like all of who we believe we are.
But as our exploration of ourselves deepens, it can gradually become apparent that because of our conditioning, we have things upside down.
Now never goes away, but time flickers, coming and going, sometimes fast and sometimes slow. The presence of now is utterly certain, and completely invariable. And, this now is conscious; alert, aware—seeing, hearing, feeling, touching, tasting and smelling. We may believe it is the time being who is conscious, but whenever this believed-in thought pauses for a moment, the effortless consciousness of now is vividly apparent.
The reflections offered above distill into the simplest of observations about being human: all of us, all of the time, live now, and no matter what, now is okay. And, to be human is to have access to time, in which things are rarely okay: time is the best method yet found to fix problems. Psychotherapy offers to fix our problems—in time—yet tends to ignore the effortless ground of being that is now. ‘Psychotherapy for the time being’ is an invitation for these seeming-two to join, to become what they are; a both/and, in which the celebratory perfection of now is not abandoned, but fully partakes of the possibilities of changing for the better, in time.