I was listening to a meditation the other day which featured the affirmation “I trust what the future holds for me,” and it occurred that I didn’t necessarily believe what I was repeating.

Western society has taught us that adopting a reactive posture to life is a bad thing.  We are urged to be proactive, to get ahead of problems and issues, to flatten the curve, to ride out in front of the wave.  In many businesses, the failure to do so is labeled as incompetence or failure.  We are conditioned not to wait for problems and situations to arise and deal with them as they come, but to anticipate what might happen and then plan for those potentialities. We have entire institutions whose sole function is to predict the future and create strategies for addressing events the prognosticators envision.

The problem I’ve always had with this forward-thinking approach to life is it pulls my awareness out of the present and drags me kicking and screaming into the future, or should I say a future – one completely imagined and fabricated in my mind based on my own past experiences and conditioning.

I stopped to consider where my mind tends to travel when left to its own devices.  I’m not a nostalgic person.  I find clinging to the past and what I’ve left behind unfulfilling and uncomfortable.  My mind much prefers to contemplate the future.  It wants to know what’s next.  Unfortunately, the what’s nexts it tends to contemplate often involve perceived problems, issues, and conflicts.  What could go wrong here?  What could turn out unfavorably there?  What bumps in the road might I encounter?  I then set about strategizing solutions to resolve the problems and avoid the obstacles before they arise.

The most detrimental aspect of this sort of forward-thinking is the future events I imagine are often the polar opposite of what I really want to occur.  And as we know, where attention goes energy flows, so our proactive imaginings are actually creating future events we don’t want.

How much simpler it is to remain present and to consciously choose how we wish to react to what life sends us moment-by-moment as each event arrives?  As Shaltazar states in a recent message, “When the mind is wandering off into the past and the future, it is difficult to be aware of the choices you are making every moment.”

This oft denigrated reactive mindset –perhaps better termed the mindset of acceptance or presence – might well be the new paradigm COVID is teaching us to adopt. We are being urged to stay in the now and absorb our attention in the present, for in the moment is where Source, Spirit, and truth dwell.

Much has been discussed about how as humans we live in the “duality,” but what does that really mean?  Simply put, it means we are both animal and Spirit, human and Divine. Upon our incarnation into physical form, we were bifurcated – the unified whole becoming divided into two separate entities: one physical and one non.  Because the physical half is what we see and touch and feel every day, it tends to fully monopolize our awareness such that we forget about the other equally real and important half which we can’t see. This time of great change is calling us to take our constant attention away from our human half and to begin to pay more attention to Spirit whose job is to be the detached observer of our human experience.

So what’s wrong with living only in the now, maintaining a degree of detachment from the events swirling around us, and dealing with issues as they confront us?  I sense it is by design that COVID has erased our ability to accurately predict the future, affording us no idea what tomorrow will bring.  It seems we are being pushed to let go of what’s next, to put tomorrow into the hands of Source, and to focus our awareness on only the Now.

A number of recent Shaltazar messages have embraced the theme of surrendering our will to the will of God.  By letting go of our future-focused programming, we are relinquishing control and commending our fate and future into the care and unconditional love of Source.  At this crucial point in the evolution of mankind and our planet, it seems we are being asked to hand over the wheel and let God drive the bus.  Maybe by remembering the Source of all is in complete control of all that is occurring every day will finally afford us the faith to trust in what the future holds for us all.

Mark Layne

Check out this podcast on Insight Timer that relates to this article

Jeffrey and Mark debate the benefits and drawbacks of the human predilection to predict, prepare, and plan for the future and how through faith we can navigate the fears and uncertainty of what lies ahead by striking a balance between proactivity and reactivity, thereby coming to trust that no matter what challenges the universe puts in our path, we have the tools to survive and to thrive.