Part 1 - Staying in the Is-Ness and Letting the Future Take Care of Itself

How do we deal with “the future?” Can we deal with the future at all? Is to deal with the future a negation of the Truths that guide our spiritual life – a negation of the axiom “Live in the Now” for Now is always eternal?

The Course in Miracles says there are only two primary states of existence: Love and Fear. Love is of God and Fear is of my ego. Love is what is real – I am an already-loved eternal spirit having a human experience. Fear (or Ego perception) is an unreal projection of my mind that continuously tells me I am a body with a soul and I am separate from God and all other humans. “…Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the Peace of God.” (ACIM, Introduction, page 1.)

AA wisdom states that FEAR, the absolute opposite of Love, stands for Future Events Appearing Real. Based on my own experience, I cannot disagree with that definition.

From the novel, The Dreaming, by Barbara Wood, Random House, Inc., 1991, pages 429, 431: While discussing various Aboriginal tribal practices and ideas, “[t]he more complex concepts had been less easy to understand, such as the way Aborigines regarded time. Everything revolved around the Dreamtime, which Joanna had discovered, occurred not only in the past, but also in the present and the future. They had no words, in fact, for past, present and future – all was Dreamtime. And the clan had no separate words for yesterday, today and tomorrow, just the word punjara, which simply meant ‘another day.’ (p. 429).

“… Joanna saw the powerful bond between the various female relations and the other generations. She saw with envy the stairway she had imagined long ago – the descent of women from great-grandmothers to daughters. The smallest child could look at a white-haired woman bent over her digging stick and see the generations through which she had descended. Perhaps, Joanna thought, that was why these people had no need for words meaning past, present and future. They were all here now.” (p. 431)

These simple Aboriginal peoples, whose oral history dates back over an estimated 50,000 years, had already nailed it! “They had no words, in fact, for past, present and future – all was Dreamtime.” With all my smarts, education, technology, and gizmos, why is this so difficult for me to grasp? Why do I persist in planning, worrying, fretting, and beating myself up for perceived future problems or issues?

“Well, Donnie, it’s an indication of maturity. It’s a predictor of success (whatever that is). It’s the wise and prudent thing to do.” I guess that’s why I persist.

But it makes me miserable. I don’t enjoy life on Mother Nature’s terms. I get angry at bugs that eat my okra leaves. I get frustrated at a 5-week drought that really stresses my yard. I get really irritated at the deer and/or rabbits that eat my Joe Pye Weed plantings. I get saddened at my trees that are uprooted or snapped off from high winds and heavy rain.

Notice all the MY’s in that paragraph. Yep. My perceptions of events are simply unreal projections of my mind. They only exist in the universe that resides between my ears. Yet, they ruin my enjoyment of life as it unfolds. Because my perception is active, I can always compare what’s happening now to what I thought shoulda/coulda/oughta be happening. It’s never a pretty picture. It’s rarely happy resulting in contentment.

Continued in Part 2