Using Clock time or being Present in the Now?

Many people ask how to deal with 'being present in the current moment to experience life fully without resistance' versus 'wanting to use our rational mind to plan ahead and function well in this society'.

The answer is: it is a combination of both. During our awakening, we start to understand the importance of 'Presence' to be able to connect with Life itself, instead of experiencing Life through the mind (perception of reality by thoughts and feelings). This is a big difference as you might know and will change your life as never before. So, we practise 'being present' more often to become more authentic and listen more to our intuition. But of course we also use our rational mind for the more practical goals we like to achieve. Let's say that our mind is a laptop and it is great to use it. Except when we forgot that we are the user of the laptop instead of becoming the laptop... aka the Ego-mind.

Anyway, as long as we are the observer to enable ourselves to choose for the state of being that we need at that moment, it's all good. Eckhart Tolle explains this topic as follows:

LETTING GO OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TIME “Learn to use time in the practical aspects of your life — we may call this “clock time” — but immediately return to present-moment awareness when those practical matters have been dealt with. In this way, there will be no build-up of “psychological time,” which is identification with the past and continuous compulsive projection into the future.” “Clock time is not just making an appointment or planning a trip. It includes learning from the past so that we don’t repeat the same mistakes over and over. Setting goals and working toward them. Predicting the future by means of patterns and laws, physical, mathematical and so on, learned from the past and taking appropriate action on the basis of our predictions.” “But even here, within the sphere of practical living, where we cannot do without reference to past and future, the present moment remains the essential factor: Any lesson from the past becomes relevant and is applied now. Any planning as well as working toward achieving a particular goal is done now.” “The enlightened person’s main focus of attention is always the Now, but they are still peripherally aware of time. In other words, they continue to use clock time but are free of psychological time.” “If you set yourself a goal and work toward it, you are using clock time. You are aware of where you want to go, but you honour and give your fullest attention to the step that you are taking at this moment. If you then become excessively focused on the goal, perhaps because you are seeking happiness, fulfillment, or a more complete sense of self in it, the Now is no longer honoured. It becomes reduced to a mere stepping stone to the future, with no intrinsic value. Clock time then turns into psychological time. Your life’s journey is no longer an adventure, just an obsessive need to arrive, to attain, to “make it.” You no longer see or smell the flowers by the wayside either, nor are you aware of the beauty and the miracle of life that unfolds all around you when you are present in the Now.”

Excerpt From The Power of Now ~ Eckhart Tolle