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Sunday, May 27, 2018

A Better Now

Good Evening All.  Hope you're enjoying the middle frame of this three day weekend!

I've been doing a little research from other self-help resources.  A good friend of hours gave me a time-honored classic that I had not already read - "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle.

I don't know about you, but this book should be required reading!

Thing is though, he teaches the same lesson my father tried to teach me when I was a younger man.  I remember quite a few dinner table conversations where I'd have some kind of argument with my Mom or my sister (they were tough ones, you had to be there), and I'd get annoyed or angry during that argument, my Dad would always interject with a simple admonition:

David?  Eat your dinner.

What was trying to say, in plain-spoken every day English, was the same thing that wise men throughout the ages had said, from the Buddha all the way up to Tolle himself:  Focus on what's in front of you, right here and now.

For my Star Wars fans, Qui-Gon Jinn said the same thing in the Star Wars prequels:

Don't center on your anxieties, Obi-Wan.  Keep your concentration here and now, where it belongs.

One huge obstacle to achieving Emotional Maturity and the Point of Evaporation is that we rehash and post-mortem things that are in the past, and we worry and get scared over things that have yet to happen in the future.  We either stay in the past abusing ourselves for mistakes we made or cursing the memories of those who did us wrong, or we look away to something that has not happened yet, assuming it even will.  And when we do that, we are distracted, unfocused, and hopelessly triggered.

(1)  Past bothering you?  Place it in your reference library and keep it there.

(2)  Future worrying you?  Prep for it.

(3)  Anything happening right in front of you?  No?  Why not?

The best way to leave the past behind, and to patiently wait until the future becomes the present, is to get a better now.

Either get busy doing something now, or meditating when unoccupied.  And if you feel yourself going back to memories of what happened - be it recent or distant - or anxiety and fear about what will or won't happen, pull yourself back to now.  And if now is boring, unboring it!

Moreover, the past and the future is the province of Our Mother Lady Karma.  She knows that the past and future are beyond our control, so She handles it.  It is She who decides whether the past hurts us or helps us, and it is She who delivers what we will face in the future.  Transmit your guilt and fear to Her, we don't need it!

The present, on the other hand, is the province of Our Father . . . and by extension, US!  The present is when we do what I always tell my Islanders to do . . . Make Something Happen!  Or nothing, if need be - but make that happen anyway!!!!

It's also the time where we take stock of our thoughts and feelings and own them hard.  Nothing that happened in the past or might happen in the future should have that much effect on what we feel, think, and do right now.

I hope anyone out there beating themselves up or worrying themselves sick can take this advice to heart.  Just . . . eat your dinner.  Thanks Dad!

I EXIST.  I MATTER.  I BELONG.  I DESERVE.

RESPECT ALL.  BEFRIEND FEW.  LOVE ONE.  HATE NONE.

EMOTIONAL MATURITY.