Here, There, Somewhere: Where are you going in life?

“I have memories – but only a fool stores his past in the future.” ~David Gerrold

I am reminded of a little story I once heard about the great scientist T.H. Huxley. He had just arrived in England and was going to deliver a talk somewhere in London. He came to the station, to the suburban station, but the train was late, so he jumped into a cab and told the driver, “Hurry! Go at top speed!”

They where racing fast, when suddenly he realized that he had not given the address. But then he also remembered that he had himself forgotten the address. So he asked the driver, “Cabby, do you know where I am supposed to be going?”

He said, “No, sir. But I am going as fast as possible.”

When I look around me I see everyone in the same predicament, everyone is moving as fast as possible but have forgotten where they are going.

Where Am I Going In Life

Please take a little time to inquire deeply within yourself, why are you moving in the first place? What is the destination that you are trying to reach? When you finally reach your destination, then what?

Many of us keep moving because we think that whatever sense of fulfillment that we are missing will be arrived at some place in the future. We go on missing life in the present, so the future becomes our hope for a better life. Tomorrow never comes, because all we have is the present moment. We are always in the present moment, we just go on missing it because our attention is always focused on a future destination.

A destination always belongs to your ego. Your ego is created through all your likes and dislikes. Through your likes your desires are born. Our desires keep us from appreciating and making contact with the only reality, which is the present moment, life itself.

We keep chasing the carrot on the stick for so long, that eventually we forget why we are chasing it in the first place. If and when we finally get what we wanted, we are only temporarily (if even at all) satisfied because the fantasy we had about it is always bigger than the actual thing itself. We love living a life of fiction. Since our mind is always forward looking, we quickly become bored and then move on to the next desire. We are never truly at ease with life, we are constantly in a state of anxiousness.

Present Moment Living

“With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you can deeply realize that past and future are fictions of the mind. That time is a man made phenomenon, who’s value is strictly of utility. You will then question where it is that you are actually headed in life. You will switch your focus to the present moment. In the present moment you should use your awareness to intelligently respond to life’s situations as they arise. When your really living in the moment, there is no where to go, your living life, you “are” life in motion, you see the simplicity of it. You realize that we make our lives extraordinarily complicated by projecting our hopes, our desires, somewhere into the future.

Some of you may think that does this then mean that we accomplish or do nothing at all in our lives? Quite the opposite, you enjoy and get more things done because you spend less time thinking and more time “doing”. You do things that bring you joy not as a means to an end, you do them because they are complete in of themselves. When you where younger you played not to accomplish anything, the playing was both the means and the end.

If you go into it deeply, you will see that your future is simply your past being projected into the future.  We seek certainty in life, and our past gives us the the appearance of certainty. If you drop your past, you drop your future as well. Most of us can’t do that, because if we drop our past, become unidentified to our minds, our memory’s, then who are we? This is something you need to discover on your own.

Living in the moment feels amazing, because being in the moment is being our true selves. We know who we are on a very intimate level, beyond any of the minds labels, any of it’s memories.

Cultivating Present Moment Awareness

“If you are still talking about what you did yesterday, you haven’t done much today.”

The moment you move inward, you will become aware of all the things that have conditioned you to always be somewhere other than where you “are” in the current moment. You will see that the mind has made us neurotic. We go on preparing for life for so long that we actually never really live it fully.

All we need to do is switch our focus, do a 180 degree turn. Meditation is the art of learning to watch your mind without judging or condemning the content of your mind, until you realize you are simply the “witness” to your minds thought process.

Through meditation by and by you become merged with the present moment, which is merging with your inner witness. Perceiving life from the perspective of the witness you see that in actuality there is no inner or outer, it is all really one organic ocean of consciousness.

Being centered in your inner consciousness you will be able go with the flow of life, because you will be inwardly and outwardly aware. You will live less in your imagination and be more in reality. Reality tastes real good. I encourage everyone to embark on their inward journey.

I hope this little story about T.H. Huxley serves as a friendly reminder to stop and smell the roses, literally. When you realize there is no where to go, but to only “be” what you “are” in the moment with full awareness (accepting the moment totally), you can relax and enjoy this delicate thing called life.

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