The past is an illusion. Even our best recollections and memories are synthetic, created to give us a false sense of security in knowing that our perceptual apparatus was perceiving the whole story accurately. That is often the only time we can find ourselves to be truly right. We know that our ideas about the past are completely made up, that is why there are so many different stories about our history, lives and experiences. We lie to ourselves constantly about why we are rich, or poor or happy or sad. Silly people, we make ourselves that way to feed or define some complex or another, nearly always unbeknownst to us. Whatever our methodology, we just cannot capture the reality of what has taken place in that very nebulous part of our timeline.
The future as well is an amalgamation of fears, anxiety, perceptual errors and to make it even more interesting and unreal, it includes hopes, dreams and expectations that have been built on the false assumptions about our past. All we really have is now.
We are Creating each moment as we go through life and often forget to pause and realize that each and every event that takes place has never happened before. In the entire history of the Universe, we create each moment, not anyone but us. What our fathers said or left unsaid has no bearing on who we choose to be this second, or the next. Whether our mothers felt that we were a godsend or a burden is of no account. What we do with each moment is wholly and completely up to us.
There are those whop seek the advice and wisdom of the elders, those who regale their pastors and preachers with stories about how much pain they are in or how the devil has tested their faith, but these too are fictional accounts of the past as surely as the day is long. Many well-meaning folks rely on "enlightened" individuals or "seeres" to tell them their future, or to assure them that things will get better or that they too can seek truth. Oddly, there are few among us who take matters into their own hands, do the subtly difficult work of paring away the illusions that we base our artificial timeline upon. "Don't think about the past, don't think about the future." was the way one of my early teachers put it. Just Be Here Now. Even in my undeveloped state, I had some difficulty releasing ideas about where I had come from and to what future I was headed. Releasing these artificial constructs took only a change in perspective. One that required trust and dilligence.
Releasing attachment to both past and future sounds as simple as child's play, but the fact is that for most of us, even asking the right questions can threaten our sense of self, or expectations and begin to feel like our sense of self is being attacked. Even as a child I got a certain sense of identity from calling myself a latch key kid, child of a single parent, war protester, student. Who I was seemed to be completely determined by what I did and what I would do in the future. When I began to understand that these traits have virtually nothing to do with who I really am and that the weight I gave them when defining my self or situations around myself was completely arbitrary, only then was I able to start the realization process. I may be all of these things, yet am none of them . I am more than words can say...I am stardust, animated.
Especially in these times, we need to speak truth to power, live according to a new code and unleash as much personal power to transform the world around us as possible. What that really means is that we do not have time to spare sucking up into our own brains, trying to make sense of what has come before or laying plans for an elaborate future take over of the power structures that have kept us in servitude and heinously raped the planet. Fretting over whether we are good parents or not, or trying to negotiate the guilt that our parents tried to make us carry is obsolete and provides nothing of importance or value in this moment. We have to begin to express a new paradigm that allows each of us to become agents of change, truth tellers and to stay in touch with who we really are and the world that we want to create instead of letting folks guide us back to old ways of behaving old ideas about good and bad, right and wrong or the dreaded guilt and shame over how we may have failed a time or two at the high stakes game of getting what we want out of life. Perhaps there is nothing to "get". Another great understanding of the way things really are came when I saw Ram Dass as a youth. He said, "I don't have to talk. You don't have to listen. We just need to Be Together and it will all happen."
He followed this up with the Ha Fiz poem: The fish trap exists because of the fish, once you have gotten the fish, you can forget the trap. Then Ram Dass elaborated: Words exist because of meaning, once you have gotten the meaning you can forget the words. Uncomfortable giggling and nervous laughter hovered in the room of hundreds, dying out as more and more people grappled with that concept. Then the next question out of the teacher's mouth was "Where can I find a man who has forgotten words, so that I might have a word with him?"
If someone tries tempting you out of your now, gently remind them that you are Creator and that you are having plenty of fun just be-ing. Try it on for a while and see how it begins to transfom each moment. Don't get upset if you can only do it for a few seconds at a time at first, the saying practice makes perfect was not created just for fun. Often I tell people that nothing worthwhile is easy and the same goes for living in the now. My own journey to this particular "now" involved carefully paring away layer after layer of excess. I find that my personal, emotional, physical and spiritual satisfaction increased with each step toward having enough. Giving away the excess and sharing as much as I can with others, as well as the planet, also brings me great joy. Perhaps that is one of the most important reasons that I write.
The future as well is an amalgamation of fears, anxiety, perceptual errors and to make it even more interesting and unreal, it includes hopes, dreams and expectations that have been built on the false assumptions about our past. All we really have is now.
We are Creating each moment as we go through life and often forget to pause and realize that each and every event that takes place has never happened before. In the entire history of the Universe, we create each moment, not anyone but us. What our fathers said or left unsaid has no bearing on who we choose to be this second, or the next. Whether our mothers felt that we were a godsend or a burden is of no account. What we do with each moment is wholly and completely up to us.
There are those whop seek the advice and wisdom of the elders, those who regale their pastors and preachers with stories about how much pain they are in or how the devil has tested their faith, but these too are fictional accounts of the past as surely as the day is long. Many well-meaning folks rely on "enlightened" individuals or "seeres" to tell them their future, or to assure them that things will get better or that they too can seek truth. Oddly, there are few among us who take matters into their own hands, do the subtly difficult work of paring away the illusions that we base our artificial timeline upon. "Don't think about the past, don't think about the future." was the way one of my early teachers put it. Just Be Here Now. Even in my undeveloped state, I had some difficulty releasing ideas about where I had come from and to what future I was headed. Releasing these artificial constructs took only a change in perspective. One that required trust and dilligence.
Releasing attachment to both past and future sounds as simple as child's play, but the fact is that for most of us, even asking the right questions can threaten our sense of self, or expectations and begin to feel like our sense of self is being attacked. Even as a child I got a certain sense of identity from calling myself a latch key kid, child of a single parent, war protester, student. Who I was seemed to be completely determined by what I did and what I would do in the future. When I began to understand that these traits have virtually nothing to do with who I really am and that the weight I gave them when defining my self or situations around myself was completely arbitrary, only then was I able to start the realization process. I may be all of these things, yet am none of them . I am more than words can say...I am stardust, animated.
Especially in these times, we need to speak truth to power, live according to a new code and unleash as much personal power to transform the world around us as possible. What that really means is that we do not have time to spare sucking up into our own brains, trying to make sense of what has come before or laying plans for an elaborate future take over of the power structures that have kept us in servitude and heinously raped the planet. Fretting over whether we are good parents or not, or trying to negotiate the guilt that our parents tried to make us carry is obsolete and provides nothing of importance or value in this moment. We have to begin to express a new paradigm that allows each of us to become agents of change, truth tellers and to stay in touch with who we really are and the world that we want to create instead of letting folks guide us back to old ways of behaving old ideas about good and bad, right and wrong or the dreaded guilt and shame over how we may have failed a time or two at the high stakes game of getting what we want out of life. Perhaps there is nothing to "get". Another great understanding of the way things really are came when I saw Ram Dass as a youth. He said, "I don't have to talk. You don't have to listen. We just need to Be Together and it will all happen."
He followed this up with the Ha Fiz poem: The fish trap exists because of the fish, once you have gotten the fish, you can forget the trap. Then Ram Dass elaborated: Words exist because of meaning, once you have gotten the meaning you can forget the words. Uncomfortable giggling and nervous laughter hovered in the room of hundreds, dying out as more and more people grappled with that concept. Then the next question out of the teacher's mouth was "Where can I find a man who has forgotten words, so that I might have a word with him?"
If someone tries tempting you out of your now, gently remind them that you are Creator and that you are having plenty of fun just be-ing. Try it on for a while and see how it begins to transfom each moment. Don't get upset if you can only do it for a few seconds at a time at first, the saying practice makes perfect was not created just for fun. Often I tell people that nothing worthwhile is easy and the same goes for living in the now. My own journey to this particular "now" involved carefully paring away layer after layer of excess. I find that my personal, emotional, physical and spiritual satisfaction increased with each step toward having enough. Giving away the excess and sharing as much as I can with others, as well as the planet, also brings me great joy. Perhaps that is one of the most important reasons that I write.
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