AMMDI is an open-notebook hypertext writing experiment, authored by Mike Travers aka mtraven. It's a work in progress and some parts are more polished than others. Comments welcome! More.
On another occasion, I was getting water from a public spigot and a couple of old hippies started chatting me up and informed me that the past and future were illusions and only the present moment was real (spontaneous metaphysical conversations are a common thing at such gatherings). This seemed extra-dumb considering we were in the midst of a festival organized around a phenomenon that had been precisely predicted years before it actually was to happen. But – it's a fairly common beliefamong mystics and it was the topic of an early Grateful Dead song, so there's that. As is my practice, I tried to find an interpretation or state of mind in which that statement would feel true.
There is indeed something special about the present moment. It is where the self is, the only part of the universe that can be directly apprehended. All those other moments are filtered through a haze of memory and representation, but the present is present. It may not be the only real moment, but it definitely has some quality that the other ones don't.
At least, that is how it appears to an embedded consciousness. From a physicist's point of view, all of spacetime is equally real, the flow of time and change is illusory, and there is nothing special about any particular moment. But I am not a physicist, certainly not in my daily life. The physicist's view of reality is in a certain sense incommensurable with or inimical to lived experience. These village elders were telling me in essence to ignore the learned rational scientific models of reality and pay attention to my actual experience. Which seems like a good thing to be able to do, at least temporarily.
WWCS about it? Hm. Actually not sure. The Buddhist aspect would, I guess, say shut up and meditate.
The Consequences of Nowness
All suffering (and other feelings) are felt in the present.
Of course, you can torture yourself in the present by imagining horrible tomorrows, but why?
Hard to tell the difference between useless worrying and prudential planning.
At any rate, you can stop! Not forever, but also, right now! Just stop!