Perhaps the present moment is an illusion in that the moment you cite it, it is the past. Yet all we have are a series of present-state moments. The past is fiction as well as the future. If we fully focus on the here-and-now, are we as attendant to the needs and possibilities that may or may not come our way?
I don’t think so. The fictitious past and future is all we have. In a strictly physical sense, the concept of “now” somehow does not make any sense. Now is already gone, while prospetive “nows” are family members together with the group of past “nows” in the family of fictitious entities. Experiencing the ever-flowing now is a meditation in itself, and a difficult one, at least to me.
Reflecting on the present puts us in a state of mental paralysis and incapability of reaching both into the past and into the future by means of memories and planning future actions, respectively. Yet at the same time, reflecting on the present provides a sense of being that drives the urge to change or otherwise affect the world that is coming to us from the future. The loss of fatalism is a necessary sacrifice, and a mother of creation.
