Any Sufficiently Advanced Absorption in the Present Moment is Indistinguishable from Magic

Three Point Essay

“The Present Moment is Magic” by Substack AI

There is only now.

The past and the future are your memory and your imagination. The existential reality is now. The present moment. Here. Now.

Much mental pain is self-inflicted. It comes from being distracted by your memory and imagination. The anxiety comes from thinking without being aware that you’re thinking.

When you’re not lost in your thoughts—fantasizing about the future or ruminating on the past—there’s only one place you can be. Here. Now.

Yes, thoughts about the past or future always come and go. Sometimes they are pleasant, sometimes they are unpleasant. But even more important than cultivating positive thinking is realizing that you are not your thoughts—that you are not the voice in your head.¹ You are what is listening. This awareness can have a profound impact on your happiness and quality of life.

Meditation can help you make this distinction. It helps you develop the ability to watch your own mind. The same way you would watch anything else.

The benefit of meditating is not that you’re going to start levitating and float away while your body turns into some psychedelic art. It’s that you can recognize how out of control your mind really is. Instead of being attached to all your thoughts, you watch them. You become detached. In this detachment you become free from self-inflicted torture.

Once you start experiencing this sense of separation from your thoughts, you might even start to laugh. Why? Because you’re observing the chattering of your mind like how you watch a movie or baseball game. You see how irrational and out of control the babbling gets. And instead of identifying with it, you step outside of it and chuckle. You have a space between you and your thoughts. Because they’re not you, they’re thoughts.

Meditation has been called the art of doing nothing. By literally not doing anything, not looking at anything, not listening to anything, not reading anything—only sitting down, eyes closed, spine straight, focusing on the breath, you’ll watch your monkey mind start shouting “YOU HAVE TO DO THIS” “AND WORRY ABOUT THIS” “OH YEAH DESIRE THIS TOO” “THE NEXT THING, THE NEXT THING, THE NEXT THING, AND REMEMBER THIS? AGHHGHHH!!!”

Simply noting these thoughts as they come and go is immensely powerful. Noticing them for what they are—passing contents of consciousness arising in the present moment—calms you down.

There is only now.

1. “If I’m not my thoughts, who am I?” That’s a good question.

“Where do thoughts come from?” This is a mystery that, I must confess, still has me stumped!