Thoughts

The frustration I feel right now comes from the lack of being present, here and now. The surrounding atmosphere can only be enjoyed and this is not enough for me.

On one side there are the duties, the promises I have made: the take me back in the past. I am way behind with my notes for the site. I have to talk about things and events that happened and are now finished and this also takes me back in the past.

The “here and now” is not enough for me. I am not in a state of total acceptance of things that happen, no matter how they happen and that’s why I start to plan my future in greater details. Here I am with a tourist guide of India (1200 pages) in my arms, deciding what I should do next, what I shouldn’t do next, how to and how not to, where to stay…

Future… human mind needs past and future in order to exist! In the present all what I have is sensation, feeling, living. Even if I have pain, there is a path that leads to death of… thought… is the path zero! 🙂 I cannot measure path zero, I cannot fully comprise it in some sort of mental pattern, yet it is there, present, in every moment…

This balancing movement between past and future, with only fugitive moments spent in the present (if I don’t simply ignore the present altogether…) really does affect me. It deprives me of my joy of living, it deprives me of being alive and being in contact with everything that surrounds me.
We were raised and conditioned into being materialists. We either are affected by the past and live in its shadows or we eagerly look towards the future to get our… fulfillment. All of this is transformed into a mechanical oscillation past-future, interrupted by brief sparkles of present. The longing for childhood actually is the longing for the continuous and uninterrupted joy, the longing for present tense. There are no other tenses but present tense!

Religion also uses the need for time, when it promises a future of… enjoyment of the present! 🙂 Blind as we are, we are looking for the paradise in the future and we fail to notice the beauty, the joy and the love to be given and to be received all around us.

Here’s how, out of longing for the present, I might even reach Goa to buy living and to buy feeling. Cheap and flavored, it stops thoughts and it freezes moments. Or I might try extreme sports, forcing me to live and feel at high intensity. The danger carves into time and expands present. When both drug and danger pass, the “occidental” state of search, insufficiency and torment returns, yet again…

As I talk about all of these things I look at the feelings and the suffering occurring inside me. The mere gesture of being in contact with me and being observant and acceptant of all that I am brings back presence…

I thank YOU for being with me, here and now! 🙂