Spiritual practice is intended to lead to a state that might be called unconditional acceptance. This involves acceptance of the good that comes our way, acceptance of the foibles and shortcomings of self and others, and acceptance of the experience of the moment, even while knowing that things change all the time in this physical experience.
It sounds similar to what Mihalyi Czikszentmihalyi calls 'Flow'. His book "Finding Flow" is a classic.
When you are 'in the flow', upstream and downstream become irrelevant to you.
Only if you stand still in the stream and resist the flow does there become an apparent significance to 'upstream' and 'downstream'.
I suspect it is the same in the 'stream' of TIME. When we go with it, then past and future have no meaning. When we fail to grasp the moment, then past and future become apparent.
Most of us are prisoners of our past - we remember far too much, and we base our current judgments on that remembrance. By recalling our past limitations, we project those limitations into the future.
Some of us are prisoners of our imagined future, whether hope and confidence (faith) is lacking, or whether due to our extrapolated past. We ignore opportunities as if they weren't there - which, for us, they are not.
The present moment contains none of that. If we could keep our consciousness in the moment, we would see only what IS, and not what WAS or MIGHT BE.
It is only in the present that we can DO anything, DECIDE anything, or EXPERIENCE anything. Now is really all there is.
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