Time is Never Experienced: Rupert Spira

From the Science and NonDuality Conference 2011, San Rafael, CA
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Rupert Spira, Artist and Nonduality Teacher

All experience is now. Try to step out of now into a past or future. Where do we or could we go? It is not possible to experience a past or future. We experience thoughts about a past or future but never the past and future themselves. This very now is the only now there is. It is not a moment in time. There is no 'present moment.' There is no time present in which the now could move forwards or backwards. It is eternally now.

Unhappiness is always an avoidance or rejection of the now. Our self, aware presence, is intimately one with all experience in the now. It knows no rejection of the now and is, therefore, happiness itself. The thought-made self is a movement of resistance or seeking, away from the now into an imaginary past or future. All avoidance and seeking is for the thought-made self, never for the true and only self of aware presence. The belief that time is real is essential to the perpetuation of this imaginary self; such a self feeds on the past and future. The now is the only place the separate self cannot stand. The now, in which all peace and happiness reside, is the only place the true and only self can be.

All the imaginary self's seeking longs only for the happiness that is inherent in the now. The imaginary self approaches the now like a moth approaches a flame. It longs for the flame but cannot experience it. It can only die in it. Likewise the imaginary self longs only for the happiness that resides in our self. However, it cannot experience it; it can only die in it. That death is the experience of happiness. This happiness lies at the heart of all experience, never imposing itself but never veiling itself, simply waiting with open arms to be recognized.

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