A core thought… what does it mean to simply be? We can’t escape it, whatever we do we are always being something. We may choose to fight what we are with what we want to be, or embrace what we are as it is. Take a quick guess at which is easier… yet we all pretty much suck at just being what we are.
Perhaps it’s the world we find ourselves in, as social creatures developed over thousands of years of evolution compounded with an infinite amount of information about others to constantly compare ourselves with. This just adds to an existing human tendency, to spend all our time in our mind, projecting to what may happen in the future or pondering what happened in the past.
This leads to the inevitability that we are not simply being… we are instead lost in a false reality created entirely in our own heads. If we were able to simply be… there is really only one possible place for that to happen, and that’s now. There are a billion ways to do this, strategies to employ learned from ancient religions, modern mindfulness, and even sports and performance training. Any of these strive to get you to the current moment, where it really is now, where we can really perform and be our best.
The evidence is everywhere, we perform our best when in the moment. No skilled person in any sport is ever pondering the past or future when in the game, only the now and what needs to be done. When we aren’t burdened with the past and future we naturally make the correct decisions. Studies are now showing that we are simply happier when we can spend time in the now, we are more satisfied when we have some sort of method to get there.
It doesn’t matter how you get there
Though some methods are temporary and quickly forgotten, it’s still effective as long as you get there sometimes. This is a challenge for me. I read material from modern and ancient teachers that I believe truly do see the now, but struggle to stay there myself. That’s OK though… the irony is that being upset about not being able to reach the moment keeps you further away from the moment, because by definition you are thinking about the past, when you noticed you were drifting in your own thoughts again.
To regain the moment, you must forgive yourself
True forgiveness is applicable to yourself, as well as all others. To truly forgive, the past must be left as the past, and unrelated to the potential NOW. This is true for yourself, as well as any others in your life. The truth is that we all have the same potential to be in the now, to do the right thing, to be the right person, to be an instrument of God or whatever vernacular describes the infinite you feel comfortable with. We all have that potential at every moment. Forgiveness requires us to not forget what happened in the past, when the right action was not made, and return to that infinite potential for good. When we apply forgiveness to ourselves, we are free to return to the now over and over again, without judgement and without fatigue for trying and failing over and over. What I hear is that it gets easier and easier…
Forgiveness frees you from the future as well.
True forgiveness releases you from the speculation that you (or another) will fail again. As we know, since we all keep that same potential to do right each moment, we must release the notion that failure is eminent. There is risk here of course, and it would be foolish to forgive and enter a risky situation such as loaning money to an addict that just might really use it for good, but may simply continue addition. In these circumstances the forgiveness is accompanied by some amount of risk analysis to reduce the potential for harm.
What happens if we really can Be…
All of infinity lives in the infinitely narrow timespan of now. This infinity has many names, to relate to my background… God. Describing this in great detail is futile of course, our minds are bound by time so this will never be an intellectual pursuit. However, we can get glimpses in feelings, in the peace that resides in a temporary trip to the now. That clarity while the baseball speeds toward you while gripping a bat, the feeling of freedom as notes ring out of your instrument in perfect time with the music. These tasks take you to now, even for a moment. In religious practice this happens in meditation or prayer as a communion with God. This is not prayer in the bible school sense, stating our egoic wishes to some personified being elsewhere. That is not prayer, but a mind exercise strengthening your own mind and made up images of a god. True communion with God happens when we lose ourselves, we find that moment of now, and we transcend the “me” that is simply made up of a collection of past memories and future expectations.
Here we find God, we find the ability to not only commune with God but to reach our full potential of God’s will. This is the exact same goal of enlightenment, nirvana, submission to the will of God. When in the now, we lose consideration of our false selves. It is this false self that drives all sin, without a self to appease we would not lie, steal, murder, covet… none of it is applicable without selfishness driven from the false identity we’ve built in our minds.
To Be is to forgive the past
To allow all possibilities of the future without expectation