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

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

"[...] 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 what we actually are. Everything then is judged and labelled ('pleasant', 'bad', 'difficult', etc) according to whatever we have decided that this 'I' is, and that is 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

"What is wrong with right now" seems to contradict the majority of positive thinking books out there. Whereas Bob Adamson 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 concepts 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 will 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 "What is wrong with right now", 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

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

"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 in this sense.

Hopefully, after reading "What is wrong with right now", we will realize that suffering is not needed, since the suffering comes from the partial view of the world that our invented 'I' has.

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

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