Returning to the Moment
Last time I mentioned that a good outcome may come for everyone through the way the economy is going and the shedding of excess, if allowed (aka. if people stop screwing with the system). If we ever explore what I mean by “excess”, we will inevitably reach the agreement that such “excess” is related to the pursuit of external, materialistic, glamorous, yet ephemeral, things. The worst part, we have come to want them so badly that we became greedy, and we let our desires take us away from truly living — the “being” part as a human being.
So really, money problem is not money problem. Health problem is not really health problem. Environmental problem is not really environmental problem. All problems we have is but one problem. That would be our way of living, which lead to all those side effects.
There are a lot of names we can call it. Greed. Entitlement mentality. Instant gratification. Attachment to things. It does not really matter what we label it…
In the end, we have simply stopped living. We stop being. Have you ever wondered why we are called human BEINGs?
If you ask me what I am doing with my life now, I will answer you that I am to be present in the moment. All good things happen in the moment, and because I cannot think of a better way to put it, I will quote Shannon Lee, the daughter of Bruce Lee:
My philosophy on life, the thing that I work on the most is to be present in the moment. My father had a saying, to change with change is the changeless state. meaning, being there in the moment, if you are always in the moment then you are taking life head on and you are changing with every moment that comes. You are present and you are aware. It’s sort of the state of perfection to be in, and the place where all good things happen.
The good that can come out of all these pain is for us to return to the moment.
When you are NOT in the moment, you are looking at the past. You are looking at the future. You want all these things so you focus on your desires. You focus solely on your dreams and ideals (notice I said solely, not that dreams and ideals are a bad things). You let greed blinds your sight. You let emotions and thoughts dictate your decision. It is a state of unawareness.
In such state of unawareness, we want external things. We want things to change externally FOR us. We rarely look to ourselves for change. To change with change is the changeless state. To have inner change accompanying the outer change is the changeless state. When we seek only outer change to force the external state to match our desires, we introduce chaos into the system, which leads to consequence (chaos) in order to restore the system into a changeless state. (kind of like the concept of entropy in physics)
At the current state of global economy, a lot of pain is being felt, and it will probably get worse before it gets better. That is my assumption because as pain keeps increasing and reaches a certain threshold, people either break or make. If people don’t break, they will unavoidably have questions in the line of “What the F is going on? This is not working. Something is wrong? What is wrong? Maybe what we are doing is not what we are to do?”
When people ask those questions, that is the beginning of real (inner) change. That will be the starting point of people’s returning to the moment. A way to truly experience life.
Similar to many examples of individuals’ rebound when their life had bottomed out. At that point, they can crash and burn and they may try to run away. Violence could be one such way. Suicide is another. Violence is an unacceptance of the current state and one’s attempt to destroy it (forcing outer change). Suicide is also a denial of the current state where one sees no possibility of outer change and forget about inner change entirely. Both fundamentally display the attachment of how things should be.
On the other hand, when people bottomed out, we all have already heard how many successful came to be because they dug themselves out of it.
Something similar has to happen to the whole population. We are in the bottoming out phase, and we either dig ourselves out or crash and burn. This has to happen collectively while simultaneously, this process of inner change, toward awareness, a kind of awakening, can only occur by each person on his own, if he chooses to, if he desires it bad enough.
That means we will experience life in our unique manner still, each with our own truth, but in a higher statement of awareness, we will be living quite differently, not so destructively, not so all-to-his-own-ly. This is a state where we are truly compassionate to others and nature, not because we should, not because we need them.
Dare I say, if we look beyond all the bureaucracy, dogma, rules, traditions of all religions, this is the principle they share and try to teach — the principle of living in the moment.
Living in the moment does not mean living hedonistically. It is also NOT a carpe diem mentality.
Read Living in the Moment here. I will revisit it also in the next post.
Originally posted 2009-03-04 23:27:32. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
