Power-of-Now Gurus

New age gurus tell us to live in the now. They talk about the power of now, being in the present etc. This is meditation, they say. But what is the now? For most people it’s an on-going repetition of past. So living in the 'now' of these gurus becomes a denial of reality. Then you wonder why it’s not working.  Neglected issues accumulate, repeating again and again. The guru will tell you you’re failing to get the message. But there’s no possibility in getting the message from gurus conjuring the facts.

One must find out for oneself what ‘being in the now’ actually is. Before we can do so, we must first understand how we are completely the result of the past. As a person there is nothing new in us. We are a ‘hand-me-down’ of past translating the 'now' through our minds, which is past. This idea of the now, presented by the conjurers of the fact, is the past denying or reshaping itself into the projected future. This can only lead to avoidance. When an issue is avoided or ignored, it inevitably results in much greater disturbances in our lives. This is how past replays into a future re-created from past. The same sad stories, same misfortunes through different events continue to remanifest.

In the reality of 'now' we have to live with the anxieties, discomforts and pains of our accumulation. There is no avoidance of the fact. Following some guru while feeding into the hope for relieving the stress is avoidance. If we want to be led, how can we know we're being delivered the truth? Obviously, the confused mind will gravitate towards a guru according to its own confusion.

Seeing the personal self exactly as it is, without trying to change or fix what we see, is the first step in transcending the conjurer, not just the external guru, but the internal conjuring within. Stillness is the only way and this is meditation in its true sense. But whenever there is denial or avoidance present, meditation can be most dangerous. It presents an escape from the immediate fact. This is the playing field of the ‘power-of-now’ guru where one can easily fall victim to the biscuit of hope.

Seeing life exactly as it is demands extraordinary attentiveness. It's the state of choiceless awareness, looking without movement. This cannot be cultivated through attending comforting seminars where the play is on the description, the nicety of words, which can never be the described. Such comfort zones are an impediment, a prolonging of the condition and the creation of another addiction. Being a light unto oneself and expressing it actively in one's daily life is more than enough.

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