
“You cannot be both unhappy and fully present in the Now.”
A New Earth (2005)
It is psychological time: past and future. Certain things in the past didn't go the way you wanted them to go. You are still resisting what happened in the past, and now you are resisting what is. Hope is what keeps you going, but hope keeps you focused on the future, and this continued focus perpetuates your denial of the Now and therefore your unhappiness. p. 43
The Power of Now (1997)
“You cannot be both unhappy and fully present in the Now.”
A New Earth (2005)
“Your roots are not there. They are in the present; and you should reach up into the other life.”
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 566
Context: A man is a fool who sits looking backward from himself in the past. Ah! what shallow, vain conceit there is in man! Forget the things that are behind. That is not where you live. Your roots are not there. They are in the present; and you should reach up into the other life.
Sam Harris, "Death and the Present Moment", speech at the Global Atheist Convention (April 2012) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITTxTCz4Ums&t=24m27s
2010s
Variant: Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life
Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)
Source: Wild Nights!: Stories About the Last Days of Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James, and Hemingway