The human mind may have a strong understanding of the past we call history and a strong sense of the future based on expectations. “I may have had past bad luck, near or far, and I hope to have good luck in the future.” “Today sucked; tomorrow will be better.” Quotes like these are a mental construct and, as such, are appropriate in the physical world to get on with life’s activity with a renewed direction. But this conjecture is not the one you think you are. You are not the conceptual mental construct your thinking mind indulges in.
With a close investigation into this hypothetical past and future, you will find we can’t do so. When would we do this? It can only be done from the present. The present is this moment, whether it be time-based within a relative space or the unbounded awareness of Now. Is there a genuine sense of the past and future within this moment? Or is it as it is happening?
The Now, this present moment without imaginary reference—meaning, who are you in the absence of memory? What are you when everything falls away? You are the presence of “I,” the pure awareness in a self-referral state, and are having the experience of relativity—experiencing the experience. You are the present sharing, the comings, and goings-on, experiencing the illusion of relativity presenting itself as a moment of something past and an expectation of a future moment.
But none of that truly exists; it is an experiential illusion that consciousness, the “I,” is experiencing as a dream of living life: both do count, the “I” of consciousness and the illusory relative, but neither matter, in a sense the relative is transitory and pure consciousness stands alone.