What Is Wrong With Right Now

"What Is Wrong With Right Now
Unless You Think About It?"
By 'Sailor' Bob Adamson

"What is wrong with right now" is an interesting and deep book. It is very enlightening, and it brings great peace when the main concept is understood.

This book is formulated as a series of questions from learners and the answers from the author.

Just an idea

"What is wrong with right now" revolves around the question 'Who am I?'. The main concept of the book is that the 'I' is just an idea:

"[...] ask yourself who is this 'me' that is giving it value? Until it comes up that you see that this 'me' is only an idea. Where is the centre? Where does this so-called me start?"

Furthermore, all of our problems come from believing that the idea of 'I' that each of us have is actually what we are.

We then judge and label everything ('pleasant', 'bad', 'difficult', etc) according to whatever we have decided that this 'I' is, and that's where the problems start:

"That is so because the very idea of 'me' separates 'me' from 'other than me' or 'non-me'. Separation is isolation; it is loneliness; it is fear; it is insecurity; it is vulnerability. This is what we continually do. We separate, and we continually search for wholeness or security or happiness."

A different approach

Whereas "What is wrong with right now" states that everything is all right, and the 'I' is just an invention, other books put emphasis on the importance of oneself and work with personal affirmations involving 'I'.

Actually, both points of view are possible at the same time. I have a friend who says that the idea of 'I' is like a drug: we have invented it and we use it because it works.

Key ideas

Some of the key ideas of Bob Adamson's book are challenging and may make you stop and reconsider your beliefs:

What is a thought?

Everything is simply first experience, registering of what's going on, awareness, presence. Thoughts come afterwards.

Our mind is just a tool; it's not who we really are. This idea is very well summarized in the preface of the book, though perhaps it is best understood after having read the entire book.

'The answer is not in the mind'. Stop searching!

There is a way to deal with the internal chatter of thoughts: by just observing it without giving it value or putting emotional energy in the thoughts, the chatter will die.

In practical terms

So how can we benefit in our daily lives from knowing that the 'I' is just an idea?

"If there is alertness there, if that awareness is acutely alert, then when the tricks start to come up, you see them."

This means that we can be less emotionally affected by what we think, and more free of ourselves.

After reading "What is wrong with right now" we may realize that suffering is not needed, since suffering comes from the partial view of the world that our invented 'I' has. We do not need to hold on to that.

I would recommend this book to you for a different approach to your existence.

Although "What is wrong with right now" feels difficult at the beginning, then you "get it" and you realize that there was never anything "to get", but rather a let go process.

"Everything is relative to 'me'. It is good, bad, pleasant, painful according to what the 'me' thinks about it or what idea it has about it. See that the thought is not the real. Then, how can you ever believe in it again?"

'Sailor' Bob Adamson

Back From "What's Wrong With Right Now"
To "Positive Thinking Books"