Andrew Cohen’s latest weekly email quote gives food for thought about the future in its relation to the present.

Most traditional spiritual practices tend to emphasize the present moment, since the spiritual dimension is said to be “outside time” and hence space.

However, time — which is inseparable from space — is a mind-creation within eternity. From the human point of view, time is a valid dimension of our limited experience. In that sense, we can surmise that the past and future are all contained within the present moment, albeit unseen by us.

Andrew gives his own take on this conundrum in his email:

In evolutionary spirituality, we are more interested in the future than we are in the present moment. Why? Because the present moment has already happened, so there is not much that we can do about it. We’ve already arrived there. But the future, which always exists in the next moment, is something we can actually impact.

Much of postmodern East-meets-West spirituality is focused on the present: “Be here now”; “Be in the moment,” we are told. And while that may bring some release and relief in the short term, in an evolutionary context, we discover that the present isn’t really where the action is. The action is in the future, because the future is something that we can actually get involved in creating. The future is something that we can take responsibility for in the most exciting way possible. When we begin to care about evolution, we feel a passion for the future that is all-consuming.

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Andrew Cohen