“We as adults may actualize and help on the spiritual life in ourselves. But our best hope of giving Spirit its rightful, full expression within the time-world lies in the future. It is toward that, that those who really care must work. Anything which we can do toward persuading into better shape our own deformed characters, compelling our recalcitrant energy into fresh channels, is little in comparison with what might be achieved in the plastic growing psychic life of children did we appreciate our full opportunity and the importance of using it.” ~Evelyn Underhill
In many popular spiritual feel-good books of today, as well as in many of the posts on Facebook and Twitter, we are told something like: the past is gone, the future doesn’t exist, the only thing we can deal with is the present. While the basic idea that we need to act now, and do good today, rather than putting everything off until sometime in the future is a good one, there is also a negative side to this attitude which may actually be greater than the positive.
Look around you. Look at the world, the people, the climate, and so on. Listen to the news on TV or radio, or look at the web pages of a news service. Are you seeing a description of an ideal world? I certainly hope that what you see and hear is not what you consider ideal. Everyday there are murders, rapes, robberies and other crimes. People are dying of all sorts of nasty diseases and new ones pop up all the time. As I write this, the news is full of stories about a disease known as MERS, which is short for Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome, a respiratory illness with no known cure and a high mortality rate that has recently entered the United States for the first time.
If we have any sense at all, we realize this is a world that has problems and can improve. We may differ on exactly what to do and how, but nearly all agree that change is needed. And this is where the main problem with the “we only have the present” attitude is found. For starters, how are you defining “present”. Is it today? This hour? This minute? We have clocks so accurate that can break a second into billionths! So by the criteria that the present is one tick on the clock, the present would be less than a billionth of a second. That isn’t enough time to even become aware of anything, let alone doing anything. It should be obvious that if we are to change anything, it must be done in the future, whether that future be one minute, one hour, or one year from now. Yes, we have to start now, but if we do so with the attitude that the future should be ignored we can never plan the type of improvement that take time, sometimes years, decades, even centuries. So yes, we need to act now, but we also need to plan for a better future by remembering and trying to correct the mistakes of the past. And this certainly includes the spiritual aspirant who cannot achieve any significant enlightenment in the present, but must work to get it in the future.
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contributed by Harold Boulette
