A great deal of attention is paid in “spiritual” areas to “the Now”. “The Moment”, the actual place that we apparently live.

This, apparently inherently and seemingly self-evidently, is the only moment that we can be in. After all, superficially, the past has gone and the future is yet to arrive.

We find that there is much material on “living in the now”, “the power of now”, “the art of now”, “mindfulness now”, “planning to stay in the moment”…

There’s only one problem with the emphasis on the Now.

“Now” doesn’t actually exist.

It’s like “new”. “Now” and “new” have a lot in common.

Neither of them exists as something you can get hold of.

You cannot ever own anything “new”.

Just like, say, buying a new car.

You can never own one, since the moment you buy it, it is is no longer new: immediately it is purchased, reached out for, grasped, it is now a used car, from the very first “moment” of apparent ownership, with an immediate decay in price.

And you can’t grasp the moment, “now”, either.

You can point to it.

Like — now.

But as soon as you point to it, it’s not there.

It has no existence.

You can’t “be Now”.

You can only Be.

“Now” is the non-existent point of intersection of two imaginary, so non-existent, fantasies. It is a dimensionless point — the sort of imaginary thing that is taught in mathematics. And as an imaginary thing, it has no actual existence. It cannot exist, because if it did it would immediately become either one, or the other, of the two fantasies that intersect.

There is the fantasy of the past, that which has apparently happened, and the fantasy of the future, that which has apparently not happened yet.

The only real difference between these fantasies or phantoms is the ineluctable feeling of certainty that the past is real and the future is potential.

It’s this feeling that makes the past appear to have really happened. But did it? Or is it just the feeling that happens? How can you prove that what you feel has just happened, happened? You can’t. It’s in the past already, and the past does not exist.

Living in “the now” is apparently quite a task. It can become a duty: “We need to live more in the moment”, says one site. We have yet another thing to do, to worry about. “Am I living properly in the moment?”

Well — yeah. You are.

You actually have no choice in this matter.

Now.

That’s where you always are, at the intersection of the non-existent past and the never-existent future.

But “now” does not exist. If it did exist it would be in existence, and therefore subject to the conditions of all existence.

Everything in existence is born, lives, and dies, in its manner and way.

Existence is mortal. Ephemeral. A phantom.

“Now” is non-existent and it is the eternal intersection where you live.

It is eternity in action in your life.

Its birth, life and death are simultaneous, contiguous and continuous.

Thus, now is eternal.

It is un-graspable.

It is permanent, because it is timeless.

It is always new.

Now is utterly inescapable: you are always there.

You can only Be.