The Dark (and Light) Sides of Living in the Moment

What if "being in the now" means no memory and no accountability?

Much is made in new-age and popular spirituality of “living in the moment” or “being in the now.” These are romanticized to the point of cliche. But what do these phrases really mean, and what are the “dark” as well as “light” sides of this adage?

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The Light Side

Let’s switch things up and address the light side of living in the moment first. As the picture above celebrates, what could make one any happier than simply lying splayed out in a park amid the grass, trees, and flowers, staring at the sky, with a good book on hand, and your puppy chasing butterflies in the background? This is just pure life living itself through you, is it not? No regrets of the past. No worries for the future. Deeply absorbed in the miracle of abundant and resplendent life.

No pessimist can ruin this eternity-in-a-moment, precisely because it is so obviously and intrinsically good and good for you. It harms no one, and it fills your being with gratitude and joy. Living gratefully and happily in the moment is what it means to be a child of spirit unhindered by dread, of being possessed by what the Buddhists call a “beginner’s mind”. Is one any closer to God than in this state? Is there any better way to be faithful to God’s creation than this? Not really. That is why children are to be emulated rather than envied.

This is what I would call the divine light-filled “living in the moment”. It is a spiritual gift granted to our openness toward the inherent goodness of creation and of ourselves. It is spontaneous, graceful, genuine, and generous. It is an unalloyed gift. We find an example of this in our peak experiences, a perfect day with friends, a sunset viewed from a mountain top, a vital immersion in nature, a seamless and effortless athletic effort (what some call “being in the zone”). This is a force of love that draws you deep into your spirit and your well-being.

So much of our adult baggage, our defensive and neurotic compensations for childhood trauma, are animated entirely by NOT being in the “now”, of always looking for an emotional tiger around the next corner and preparing endlessly for this ghostly threat. In fact, ironically, our negativity and anticipation of a threatening future based on a painful past seems to invite people and events which REAFFIRM, replay, and reconstitute that earlier-life trauma and conditioning. Who wouldn’t choose “living in the moment” over this if they are conscious!

“I simply want to be happy and live again” (in the present) is an effective antidote to “I don’t want to be hurt again,” and it serves as a declaration if one acts upon it. This, of course, is all well and good when one is alone and in control of one’s experiences, but as one enters relationship with another person or one’s own shadow, things get a little more complicated. Now your individual drive toward happiness is entangled in the various unacknowledged traumas and despairs. You meet your own shadow or that of another being, who might hide this darker interior reality from you. You were looking for butterflies, but now you are presented with bats.

There is a understandable temptation in this space to adopt the human lightweight version of “living in the moment” where imagination and fantasy create an self-made illumination to contend with the darker elements, much like children fantasize to contend with adult brutality, mental illness, and unreasonableness. Each of us must face an unjust world with inadequate equipment, and sometimes we have to create a diversion or a rose-colored alternative either to the barbarity in front of us or the wounding within us. Optimism and hope are not delusions. They are real, but they can often emerge as positive adaptations to a negative present.

The Dark Side

It is not a coincidence that people with Cluster B personality disorders (those with borderline, narcissistic, histrionic, sociopathic, and psychopathic traits) are excellent at “living in the moment” in a different way. The emotional train wrecks that they have created for others and for themselves are painful and uncomfortable, so why not simply offload them and “be in the now”! In fact, in one video self-taught psychologist Sam Vaknin, (himself a psychopath with narcissistic aspects) put out the research statistic that “Cluster B’s” can lose up to 90% of their memory simply to be able to function in the present and forget not only their childhood trauma but the damage they are doing to everyone else in their lives.

As Vaknin theorises:

(N)arcissists have lost their "true self", the core of their personality, which has been replaced by delusions of grandeur, a "false self". Therefore, he believes, they cannot be healed, because they do not exist as real persons, only as reflections: "The False Self replaces the narcissist's True Self and is intended to shield him from hurt and narcissistic injury by self-imputing omnipotence… The narcissist pretends that his False Self is real and demands that others affirm this confabulation."^[29]

So now the “dark side” of living in the moment comes out: It can be an excellent way of 1) forgetting all the pain one possesses (preventing one from acknowledging and healing that pain), and 2) escaping any kind of responsibility or accountability for the pain one causes others. This might even be understandable— one cannot function being overwhelmed by the one’s own pain along with the reprisals from harming others.

The dark side has a divine and human component too. Divinely, one can be beset to dark-filled forces (what some call “elementals”) and capitulate to them. When people refer to spiritual warfare, this is most often what they are referring to. The proverbial devil whispering in your ear counsels you, through the weakness created by your own alienation and suffering, to take the quick and false route to recovery and self worth. Present-minded but unapologetic deception is used to extract the innocence and energy of others in order to bolster one’s own decrepit condition. This is unalloyed evil, pulling one ever downward. It is like a vampire given “life” by feasting on the blood of others, and therefore it does deep harm to the self, other people, and the world.

Then there is the dark-tinged human version of “living in the moment,” where the blast-radius of harm is largely restricted to the self and close friends and family members. This is where injuries like traumas and addictions cause deficits which perpetuate through the family line. This is where one abused in childhood, becomes the abuser. This is where some deep experience of abandonment may create a psychological condition like borderline personality disorder that inadvertently (but no less harmfully) causes injury to others, especially children.

A fantasy of one’s own “right” to use others to “make up for” an abusive past, perpetuates the cycle of abuse and creates a compensatory entitlement and grandiosity that rationalizes taking advantage of others. We can understand this and feel empathy for the origin of this train of darkness, but, of course this understanding does NOT mean excusing. One must face reality past, present, AND future and HEAL, and not inhabit a grandiose fantasy and continue to harm oneself and others by attempting to avoid pain and trauma. This “facing reality” is the way of faith and truth.

Reconciling and transcending the light and dark sides

The examples above, the human light side and the divine and human dark sides, share a certain ignorance— that one cannot and should not face one’s “shadow”. The spiritual light-filled side works effectively to heal injury, but the human lightweight side seeks to ESCAPE pain by overwhelming or displacing it with an optimistic fantasy. You see this in so much of the romanticized narrative around finding your forever “twin flame” and an incomplete form of “mindfulness” that treasures the external flower but avoids the interior dread. “Something is going to rescue me” seems to be the unstated refrain.

The dark side is more defensive and compensatory, rather than positive and spontaneous, in its approach. It will offload its pain on to others and parasitically collect “supply” (emotional energy and praise) in order to shore up its non-existent or warped sense of self. Of course this leaves falseness, manipulation, and ruin no matter where the afflicted person may roam. The dark side, as with the human light side, is not ready to recognize a persistent central pain or trauma itself, but rather than choosing positive imagination to fill in the gap, it chooses deception and compensation.

How can this psycho-spiritual conundrum be resolved? In short, with Reality, with a capital “R”. Christian mystic, Evelyn Underhill summarized mysticism as merely (and difficultly) “the art of union with Reality”. ALL things, light and dark, joyful painful are real on some level and important to recognize not only in their totality but in their contrast and “dance.” We do not not know love without hate, nor courage without fear. We cannot simply pick sides if we are truly spiritual, but rather admit a full and transparent “holding” and recognition of these human qualities within our deeper spiritual essence. We must, therefore, bend the the human light side and the divine and human darkness within us toward the light-filled spirit. We must turn toward the divine sun to heal, recover, and rebirth who we are as whole, healthy, and good.

We must recognize that the “bad” happens only when we deny the fullness of human experience and existence, whether through a pie-in-the-sky optimism, or a wretcheder-than-thou pessimism. Butterflies are good: They are beautiful and they pollinate flowers. Bats are good: They are comical (and somewhat cute up close!) and they eat TONS of insects. By holding the “bad” (painful) and the “good” (pleasant) with equal endearment and respect, we HEAL through fully honoring the contrast and contradiction of human experience. We then invite an honest holism that operates as the door to a truer, more complete Reality.

This does not in any way mean excusing evil or even unintentional harm for any reason. These are to be confronted unreservedly, with love, yes, and the power of faith but courageously and uncompromisingly. Child torture and sex trafficking is never okay, and no new-age or karmic “soul contract” explanation of abuse should ever hold sway. “You abused someone in a past life, and now you are trying on what it is like to be abused” is garbage. We will never create a world without abuse if accede to such moral cowardice and spiritual laziness.

“Deny nothing. Hold, regard, and love everything, even your enemies.” That, my friends, is healing spiritual confidence and the way forward for humanity.

All blessings, Zeus

P.S. A special note of thanks and gratitude to a wise spiritual friend who read the first published draft of this essay. She inspired me to clarify and fill out my understanding. Even without having read the earlier draft, you can interpolate what I have chosen to add and clarify in response to her comments on my original draft below:

Friend: “ Hi Zeus. I read your article. Thank you very much for sharing it with me. It was very well written and you make some very good points I hear what you’re saying about living in the present and also what you say about narcissists and others with cluster B personality disorder makes a lot of sense. About living in the moment: I would argue that when done properly present moment awareness actually automatically and effortlessly brings deep insights into not only the nature of reality but also of our lives our behaviors and ourselves. So it doesn’t necessarily have to be a form of escapism and it isn’t “supposed to be” and isn’t when approached “properly”

“Also I of course understand what you’re saying about all things light and dark being real and part of a contrast and dance. However I am not sure that bad only happens when we are either crazy optimists or seri(ous) pessimists. For example, I just had a beautiful swim and the butterflies were flying all around me. The water was glorious so with the clouds and the breeze and the birds. At the same time I had the awareness of my emotionally disturbed neighbor who is really damaging a small puppy emotionally and possibly in other ways. I am afraid I will see this as bad no matter what I do even if I accept that it’s part of the dance good and bad. There are many many bad things happening all around me every day. I look at them clearly I see why people do the things that they do and I understand that it’s from their pain and fear generally but it doesn’t cause me to find what they’re doing any less bad. Is it because I’m too optimistic and I expect people to be sane and kind? I can become a realist and say this is simply the state of humanity at present but I’m afraid I will still find their actions bad and it’s not all good to me… Anyway it’s a great thought-provoking article and I appreciate you sharing it. These are simply the thoughts it provoked in me:-)”

Zeus: “These are great points and I happen to agree with them. I may have to add to the story given what you say. I tried to indicate an unconditionally good living in the moment in my intro paragraphs, but that got kind of drawn into the conditionally “light” form I provided later. There are more or less pure forms of both light and dark living in the moment. I would love it if you posted these above comments to the essay. These are all really good points.”

“I should have made a clearer distinction between light-filled (the proper deeply immanent version you mention above) and lightweight (the tainted escapist version). The same could be said about my conclusion. Loving your enemy does not mean enabling them nor does it make what they do “any less bad”. True. And that should be explicated more clearly as well. Maybe I will add an addendum on both of these points. Is it okay if I quote you? Alternatively I can simply refer to you as a “spiritually wise friend” to enter these important clarifications.”

Friend: “Sure you can say a friend commented or simply put it in your own words.”

Zeus: “Thanks. Will reflect on this and add. It’s good stuff.”

Friend: “Thanks! It’s a good article that provokes thought and conversation :-) I’m sure many others will have this experience after reading it.”