Wanting To Know The Future

One of the ego’s strongest desires is to know the future. It wants to know the future very badly, so badly that it often resorts to making it up, if not in a full-blown fantasy, at least in thoughts and beliefs about the future that constantly change. Sometimes such fantasies are negative and depict the ego’s fears about the future. The likelihood of events actually occurring in the often dramatic way the mind imagines is miniscule; and yet our thoughts about the future grab our attention, stir up our emotions, and can even cause us to act in certain ways. The ego creates a problematic future and then takes steps to avoid it. To the mind, thinking about the future seems reasonable, prudent, wise, and practical. But nothing could be more impractical than being detached from the Now and lost in imaginary fears and plans, and actions to avoid those fears.

It’s natural that the ego operates like this, because it doesn’t trust life. It doesn’t recognize the Intelligence behind life, which is wise and loving, and helping us to evolve toward being wiser and more loving. The ego doesn’t see that life is good and trustworthy because it’s busy telling negative stories about life, about how unfair and unsafe it is. Of course the ego is frightened—it frightens itself with negative stories. It doesn’t see the love, goodness, and support that are present, and it doesn’t appreciate that challenges and difficulties evolve us in ways like nothing else can. Essence knows the truth about life, but when we are identified with the ego, its beliefs, and the stories it spins, we don’t see things as Essence sees them.

We want to know the future because we want confirmation of the ego’s belief that the present will be redeemed by something better in the future. We want someone to tell us, “Yes, your prince (princess) will come, and you will live happily ever after.” The ego’s stance is that whatever is happening isn’t good enough, but someday life will be wonderful, and then that bliss will last forever. This fairytale is so deeply embedded in our makeup that we may not even realize we are telling ourselves this story. This belief interferes with experiencing this precious moment. Moreover, it interferes with seeing the truth about life: It is constantly changing, we have little control over it, and it’s full of things that are both likeable and unlikeable.

The ego isn’t seeing the whole picture when it rejects the Now. It rejects the moment because it focuses on what isn’t present that it would like to be present. If the moment isn’t providing sufficient pleasure, power, safety, comfort, specialness, superiority, or security, it rejects the moment. But life doesn’t exist for the ego’s pleasure and to bolster its sense of self. Life exists for all of life, and it contains everything we need to be happy if we are willing to be in the moment without our opinions, beliefs, and judgments.

Stripped of thought, the Now is alive and always changing into something new and unexpected. The Now moves, and it is full of all sorts of things that dazzle the senses, inspire love, and surprise us. The Now is all we need and it is all we really have. That the Now can be any other way than the way it is showing up is an illusion. The ego has little power to change what is happening because it’s already too late—life has already moved on to the next moment. All the ego can do is interfere, through its dissatisfaction, with having a full and rich experience of the moment. The ego’s discontentment saps the joy out of life, so it’s no wonder we long for a better moment. The ego spoils the present moment and promises a better one, but a better moment will never come unless the mind becomes quiet or is ignored. And then every moment is good.

When we find ourselves wanting something other than what is showing up right now, it can be helpful to ask ourselves what we think getting what we want will give us. We think we will finally be happy when we get what we want. What we discover when we do get what we want, though, is that even that wonderful moment disappears and is replaced by the next one and the next one. Life keeps moving on, bringing us a mixture of what we like and don’t like. Why not like—love—everything that life brings you, because whatever it is won’t be here for long, it will never be this way again, and the way it is, is all you’ve got.

From Embracing the Now: Finding Peace and Happiness in What Is by Gina Lake
Copyright © 2008 Gina Lake