Does living fully in the present moment mean we should never think about the future? Is it possible to reconcile being fully present with future-based ideas like goal-setting or making appointments?
The question that best sums it up for me is this:
What is the role of the future for someone who lives fully in the present moment?
And the answer I’ve arrived at is this:
The future is simply a tool that we can use to create a joyful experience of the present moment.
It sounds like a paradox, so I’ll explain it like this.
The idea of ‘future’ goes hand-in-hand with the idea of our life’s purpose. Our life’s purpose transcends time. This is why it seems to spill out of the present moment, why it seems so continuous and persistent that it is in every present moment, including those of the future. That’s why it’s your life’s purpose, as in your whole life, not just your life in this moment.
Remember that the future doesn’t actually exist and is only an idea. So I like to think of it as a tool. The future is a tool you can choose to use to guide you in making decisions in your present moment, which is the only ‘space’ where you have any power.
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This is how I use the idea of the future.
When I want to talk to someone and have to make an appointment, I ask myself: how do I feel, right now, about making this appointment? Do I feel happy? Do I feel excited? Do I feel like I’m living my life on purpose? If the answer is yes, then the appointment is part of my life’s purpose, and I am being true to my present moment by making it.
When I set a goal for the future, I ask the same question: how does having this goal make me feel right now? Am I in a higher state of vibration as a result? Does it make me feel true or, to use an inadequate everyday word, good? If the answer is yes, then that goal is part of my life’s purpose and I should keep it.
When you are true to your present moment, you are also open to changing your appointments and goals. Say you reach a later moment when you become aware that what you set up no longer serves you. Being true to that moment means you ought to break the appointment or scrub the goal. It simply means that somehow, having the goal in your calendar has finished serving its purpose, even if you didn’t achieve it.
This is where we have to beware of attachments and agendas – often, we feel the need to ‘finish what we start’. We keep the appointment because it wouldn’t be nice to cancel. We keep the goal because we’ve told so many people about it that we’d be embarrassed to say we’ve changed out minds. But being true to the present moment means not having goals that don’t ring true.
Similarly, if we set goals out of need, then we are not using this tool called ‘the future’ very well. Like any tool it can be used for true or untrue purposes. You can cast your mind into the future, imagine the accolades you’d get for doing a particular job, so you set a goal to do that job. The thought of the accolades makes you feel good, but the thought of doing the job itself makes you feel reluctant or stressed. But you set the goal anyway. That is not the way to use the future.
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You have no reason to think of the future unless you’re thinking of your life purpose.
In his novel The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho uses the term ‘personal legend’ to mean our life’s purpose, and I like the term so much that I use it from time to time.
We should always be able to see our personal legend from where we are. It is always connected to us through the present moment. When we’re present, we inhabit our personal legend; we are one with it. When we’re not present, our life purpose is obscure to us. When the thinking of the future doesn’t make us feel infinite, connected, and we can see its path back to today, then that future is something our ego made up, rather than the future that contains our personal legend.
When we hit upon the future that is our personal legend, our state of being lights up; we become a higher state of vibration – literally, excited, in the way a physicist would use the term to describe an subatomic particle that has more energy – we feel happy.
In any moment, we can choose to see our personal legend or not, and our state of vibration, our level of excitement, changes depending on this choice. Our intuition – the remarkable sixth sense that is the voice of our greater consciousness – is what reliably tells us where to look. We choose whether or not to listen to it and reveal our personal legend to ourselves. Once we see this personal legend, the steps between the present moment and the future moment begin to reveal themselves, one step at a time.
And each step is the same as this step, the one you’re taking now. The question you’re faced with right now is exactly the same as in the next moment – can you see your personal legend? If not, have you stepped off ‘the path with a heart’, as Carlos Castenada calls it? If you have, then how do you find it again?
You find it the same way you always find it. Follow your heart, and there will be the path with your heart. This is the role of the future: when you think of the future, it should be absolutely and undeniably connected to the present. When you think of the future and you feel true, you are serving your life purpose, because anytime you feel true, you are both connected to the present moment and you are serving your life’s purpose. The future should feel like it has everything to do with how you’re living now and what you’re doing now; the future should be completely congruent with your present.
If it isn’t, either your vision of the future is faulty (it’s not your personal legend you’re seeing, but something you’ve made up out of fear), or your present is faulty (you’re giving in to your fears and not doing the things which are the steps on the journey to your personal legend; in other words, you have stepped off the path).
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We all have a life’s purpose, our ‘personal legend’, the thing we are meant to do. Part of the game of life is to reveal this personal legend to ourselves, and the rest of the game of life is to live out our personal legend.
If someone is having trouble seeing what their life purpose is, it’s usually because they’ve let their ego get in the way. Your life purpose is simply what you love doing. But people often think a life purpose is a grand thing that society would find impressive – perhaps something ecological, or something about saving humanity.
This is the ego’s judgment jumping in. As Eckhart Tolle says, “Greatness is a mental abstraction and a favorite fantasy of the ego. The paradox is that the foundation for greatness is honoring the small things of the present moment instead of pursuing the idea of greatness.”
Your life purpose could be raising your children – it is your life purpose because only you, of all the human beings who would ever walk the planet, are meant to do it. Your life purpose could be to have a ski trip twice a year, while packing boxes in a warehouse the rest of the time – it is your life purpose because you see no reason to want anything else. Or indeed your life purpose could be to invent a cure for a disease or to lead a victimized community out of oppression.
Your life purpose is not the same as your job. Serving your life purpose may involve several different jobs and roles along the way – they all add up to serving your life purpose, even if you cannot see how. Do not think that just because you keep moving from thing to thing that you are not serving your life purpose – as long as you are moving from a thing that makes you truly happy to another thing that makes you truly happy, you are. It’s only your ego, acting on some need for approval, that says you’re not.
When you live your life purpose, you allow others to do the same. Doing the thing that you’re meant to do lets other things and other people fall into their rightful place. The world is in harmony. And you know this is your life purpose because you’re happy, and you’re not looking for anything else
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Hey Lyle,
Wow. First I’d like to take a moment out to say how this essay reminds me of white water rafting. I started out in the calm waters, I hit some bumps, rocks, tumbled down some rapids, and then when I hit the calm, I was exhilarated. This is also very cool because I have written something similar yet completely different recently and it’s interesting to read for that reason as well… (more on that later).
For me, I’ve had to take goals out of my vocabulary because I know it allows me to fall into agenda and results trap rather than on focusing on what I love just because it’s what I love. I’m uncertain on the goals word, but I know its different for everyone.
Love your work Lyle!
Lyle,
You have put into words what I have been understanding for a while. It is a brilliant blog! Many people end up in a lost place not understanding how they got there. This blog explains that journey. Really wonderful.
Lily
Hello Kirra and Lily,
Thank you so much for your invaluable comments and support! I deeply appreciate them.
Kirra, I look forward to your “similar yet different” post. Yes, the word ‘goal’ is indeed a charged word! For me, it used to mean something I should be doing that I’m not. That was very emotionally charged! I now realize it was the fearful screechy voice of my ego. Now a goal is simply an intuitively-arrived at vision about a future that fills my present moment with joy.
But you’re absolutely right in that the word is different for everyone – as it should be, I believe. Language is purposely inadequate: some things (and maybe all things) cannot be expressed in words and are in the world of feelings.
As a writer and composer, I have learned to celebrate the ‘failure’ of language – I choose the ‘bon mot’ or ‘bon ton’ and yet am instantly aware of what I haven’t expressed, but rest in the faith that my intention is received by the reader and listener. The subject of a future blogpost, perhaps!
Thank you both for persevering through the rapids 🙂
Great article Lyle, you have touched on a topic that is so relevant to our life and culture here. The more I learn in this new direction I have taken, the more I become disillusioned with everything my ego developed so I can function in this society. In fact the more I learn on this path the more I need to unlearn of my self, like peeling the layers of an onion.
And on the topic of future, all the emphasis on the 5 year plan, 10 year plan, where are you going? No mention of ‘Where are you now?” and the respect for the profoundness of that state of presence. That future is a concept has been a hard one to shed, I like that you dedicated so much to discussing it.
I also wanted to add that, as you so rightly say, while thought in the future is rather futile, once we fully tune into the intuition, clues that become useful for future events are delivered to us in the here and now.
thanks again and lots of love
v xo
Thank you, Vania! I do know what you mean about peeling away the layers of an onion. This is how I see it – the more I learn on this path, the more choice I have about how I behave. A lot of what we consider the ego’s behavior are simply choices made unconsciously, rather like automatic reactions. Living consciously cuts down on the automatic behavior, and in so doing makes the ego a friend and traveling companion. Thanks again and take care.
Great Article! Really inspirational and just what I needed today.
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