The Eternal Now
Inspired by a Profound Question
This reflection was sparked by a fascinating exchange between a 13-year-old boy and Rupert Spira during a retreat. Spira’s response challenged the very nature of how we perceive time, and set a new stage for embracing the present.
You can watch the full conversation at Time Is Never Actually Experienced - Rupert Spira.
The Illusion of Time
As I’m sure you’ve noticed, there is a lot of focus in the spiritual world on being present. Practicing awareness techniques, like the three sites, inspire the discovery of detachment from our thoughts. However, the yin to this yang is choosing thoughts that powerfully guide you toward being present.
Discovering thoughts, or mantras, that bring us into presence is a wonderful and unique journey for each of us. But sometimes, a single insight can be enough to shift our entire perception of reality. One such moment for me came when I heard Rupert Spira answer a question from a 13-year-old boy at a retreat: “Why do we lose a sense of time when we are asleep?”
Spira’s response was simple yet profound. He turned the question around and asked, “How many ‘now’s’ do we experience in a day?” Most of us believe time is linear, that we are moving from the past into the future, with the present as a fleeting moment in between. But Spira pointed out that we do not experience a succession of “now’s”—we experience only one Now, always.
The Orange Glasses: A Filter on Reality
To illustrate this, Spira uses a metaphor: Imagine you are wearing orange-tinted glasses your entire life. You would assume that everything in the world has an orange hue. But if you were to take the glasses off, you’d suddenly see that orange was never an inherent property of the world—it was only a filter applied by your vision.
Time and space, he suggests, function in the same way. They are conceptual lenses that our minds apply to help us make sense of reality, but they are not fundamental truths. “We think we are moving through time, but actually, it is time that moves through us.”
If we only ever experience the Now, then where exactly is the past? We can imagine it, recall memories, reconstruct events, but can we actually go to the past? No. We can never directly experience it. And if experience is the only real evidence of something’s existence, what does that say about the past?
The Freedom of Letting Go
And if the past doesn’t exist, then neither does the future. As Spira puts it, “The past and future only exist as thoughts appearing in the present.” Time, as we conceive of it, collapses into the one undeniable reality: Now.
Holding this idea in my mind has been transformative. The realization that the past does not exist means I am not bound by it—not by yesterday, not by five minutes ago. The stories we tell ourselves about who we are, based on past experiences, start to loosen their grip. If the past isn’t real, then who am I? The answer is simple: whoever I choose to be, right now.
Living in the Eternal Now
There is a magical freedom in this consideration. I recommend you give it some energy the next time you become still with yourself. Instead of anchoring yourself to the weight of past experiences or anxiously projecting into the future, allow yourself to rest in the direct experience of Now. “What we are looking for is what is looking,” Spira reminds us—our search for meaning, for peace, for freedom, all ends in the same place: the recognition that we have never left the Now.
Through practice, this realization moves beyond meditation and into daily life. You begin to see that every moment is fresh, unbound by what came before. You release old stories, loosen attachments, and awaken to the deep reality of presence. Eventually, recognizing that you already are entirely the person you want to be.
All that is required is to see.
