Pretending Away From Now

 The place where you are is the place where you are always pretending you need to be somewhere else.

Alan Watts

Think about that line above for a minute.  .....Okay , now go back and read it and think about it again. :) 

Pretty cool eh? Where you are right now is exactly where you are supposed to be...infact, there is nowhere else to be. This is it!  Yet, in this place where you are supposed to be your mind is constantly telling you, you need to be somewhere else. 

You need to go back, it says,  and "do" something about whatever happened in the past.  I mean, you know you can not physically go back in time...but you can go mentally back, maybe to erase certain features that memory has painted on your psyche,or supress, repress and keep your hand there holding it down, like a rubber ducky, in a bath tub so it doesn't pop up and scare you. Exhausting!  Maybe your mind is telling you ...you have to rationalizeyour part in the event  in some way to ease the shame and guilt you are feeling or maybe it is telling you to give yourself a good beating for it.  Maybe the mind is pulling you back because it is rationalizing the need for that drink or that unhealthy and unhelpful activity you are about to partake in .  Yeah...you with the mind's guidance  often pretend  that you need to be in the past.

And we definitely pretend we need to be somewhere up there in the future.  That I believe is the true disease of our generation...the using this moment to get somewhere up there.  We are always planning and worrying, conniving and thinking ahead...with this honest and sincere belief that is what we are supposed to do. We drag "to-do" lists behind us that are 20 feet long with plan A, and Plan B...and "what to do if all else fails" written on them. We think that we can somehow control life but as Alan Watts reminds us, we do not know how to interfere with the way the world is.  It just is. 

Even in our spiritual practices ...we seek to get ahead. We say things like, "When I get there to that state of realization or enlightenment, then I will enjoy the moment as it is."  

How ironic is that?  When enjoying, allowing, embracing the moment for what it is is the spiritual practice and the spiritual achievement at the same time. 

Yet, we view this moment we are in , which is the only time there is,  as an inconveneince, especially when it offers things that we judge as "bad, wrong, shouldn't be".  In our resistance of this moment we create or add to our experience of suffering. We are not getting anywhere. 

You do not need more time; you do not need more suffering.  You need time [for realization]only until you realize you do not need more time. Eckhart Tolle

When are we going to get it? Where we are right now is where we are supposed to be because it is the only place to be. What is "happening" right now is supposed to be happening because it is the only place where it can happen. 

Hmm! Something to think about.

All is well!