NYC Traffic
Whenever I go hiking before, I would try to get up very early because if I get to Manhattan by 7 AM, the traffic is huge. There was this moment when I got stuck there and the taxis and cars were just driving crazy. They were making turns and changing lanes without consideration for the others. I thought to myself, “where are these people going that they are in such a hurry?” The answer popped into my mind, “they are all trying to get to the future where the mind thinks everything is good, no worries and they have no problems.”
They were such in a hurry to get to that future moment where they think everything is nice and everything is good. Why are they in such a hurry? It is because right now is just so terrible to them. They consider the present moment as an obstruction or obstacle towards the future moment that they need to get to. They frantically trying to get away from the present moment because the present moment is so terrible and so unsatisfactory. Staying in this horrible horrible present moment where I don’t have a lover, don’t have a car, and so on is very very miserable to the mind.
How Can I Be Happy?
How can I be happy, I don’t have a lover, I don’t have a house, I don’t have my promotion and so on? I need all these things to make me happy. These things will complete me and make me happy. I can only get these things in the future? So almost everyone you will meet have this sense of self that is very unsatisfied. I’m not satisfied right now so I need to get to the future where I will be satisfied. I need to get away from this horrible horrible place I am in right now. So everyone lives with this mind set that my life is not complete, unsatisfied, or not good enough… this life is not making me happy and so on.
There Will Always Be That Person
There will always be that person that will say,” not me, maybe everyone is unsatisfied but not me. I just found the love of my life or I just won the lottery. Everything in my life is good. I have arrived!!! Maybe your life is bad, my life is good.” There will always be that person, I would say, “give it time then you will be back here after the honeymoon is over.” The world may satisfy you for a brief period of time but it cannot satisfy you forever. The world will always have its ups and its downs.
There will also be people who would see this and think, “oh so I’m not the only one with this mind set, that is unsatisfied, always looking towards the future to find salvation.” That is when an opening in consciousness happens and the person becomes more aware of his mind, of his feelings and the present moment.
The One Thing That You Don’t Want To Happen
The one thing that you don’t want to happen is to be told that “you don’t have anymore time.” It is the one thing that scares the egoic mind more than anything is to be told that “you don’t have anymore time.”
“Oh no!!!! How am I going to get the house that I want? How about the lover that I have been longing for? I need time for that. I need to complete the story of me. How am I going to complete the story of me. How am I going to reach a very satisfying ending like the things I saw in movies?”
The egoic mind seeks salvation in the future. To be told that future is no longer possible is what scares the mind the most. But people who were about to die and no longer have time can also create an opening in consciousness. The person could stop chasing the future and start enjoying the present moment.
Let’s Say You Won The NBA Championship
Let’s pretend you are an NBA player and won the championship. It will feel good. You will celebrate it with your team mates, family and friends, and so on. You wake up the next day, you realize that moment is gone. That moment will no longer happen ever again. It only exists in your memory or in your mind now. That specific moment only exists as thoughts in your head. The feelings that you felt will soon fade in time. Next year, if another team wins, it will hasten the feeling that you are no longer the champion. You are no longer relevant. This is the level of satisfaction that this world could give a person. The world could only fulfill you or satisfy a person for a brief time. Sooner or later such events will be gone and will only exists in your head. No one would even care other than you.
I’m Sure That
I’m sure that Johnny Depp and Amber Heard once thought that they will be happy and complete each other. Amber probably was like, “I married a handsome man, very charismatic, rich, and will help me on my career.” Johnny was probably, “I married a beautiful woman, young, and someone I can share all my happiness with.” Both of them probably thought, “Yes, I finally found the love of my life. I will be happy forever and ever!!” Now, they are causing each other tremendous amounts of pain and worry. This usually happens, the one thing that you think will make you happy, will ultimately create the most amount of pain in your life.
I’m sure God is like this to people, “I gave you everything, you can think and feel anything you want, and you think this one little thing will make you happy? I will make sure this one little thing causes you a lot of pain to make you wake up that you don’t need anything.”
You may think, “no that won’t happen to me. When I become rich and famous, I’ll be free of problems.” So we look at the newspapers and tabloids, here we will see all the rich and famous people with their problems. People get a high whenever they read how miserable rich and famous people are. Elon Musk is rich but lots of people want him to fail, he got involved in politics, his life is not all positive. He is facing a lot of problems and conflict than most people. If you think when you become rich and famous, you won’t have anymore problems, I’m sure we will see you in one of these tabloids with your new found problems.
This is something you should think about. Anything you accumulate will have problems that come with it. You will have your current problems and new problems if you accumulate something new. This may make you even more miserable than you already are.
I’m Not Saying Don’t Accumulate
I’m not saying don’t accumulate or don’t go after the things you want. I’m saying that you cannot find everlasting fulfillment in the world. The heaven that you are looking for cannot be found in the world. You cannot find it in the things that you accumulate. If you try to find salvation through the objects that you accumulate, you will sadly be disappointed. The world will always have the ups and the downs. But when you accept that, the world actually becomes a very fulfilling place to live in. When you no longer expect the world to satisfy you, the world then actually becomes very satisfying to live in.
The heaven you are looking for is within you. You already have it which is why you cannot accumulate it.
The Ego Attaches Itself To The Objects It Accumulates
“You are wrong! If I accumulate money, house, car and so on, at least it is still better than having nothing. If I get something and lose it then at least I had it. Better than never having it.” This is where the fallacy comes in. You think that losing something will not cause you pain. Whenever the egoic mind accumulates something, the mind attaches its identity towards that object. If you get a house, you will attach yourself and identity towards it. I’m a person with a house. I’m a person with a car, I’m a person with a lover and so on.
Hard to explain this. Let’s say, I’m a beautiful man with a beautiful body. The ego tries to attach itself to this identity so the person uses steroids to keep this identity as much as possible because losing this identity is unbearable to the ego. I don’t want people to look at me say, “he is ugly now or he doesn’t look as good as before.” I don’t want people looking down on me or thinking I am no longer beautiful. Hard to think of something that everyone can relate to. Gollum from LOTR is a good example of the pain you can have by acquiring something. Like there will be moments that we can see in his eyes where he will be human and then he will then turn back to this evil monster that needs his precious thingy that will make him happy forever. He is willing to destroy anyone to get it.
What if you are about to lose this object that you accumulate? So now, you are back to being unsatisfied, trying to get to your future self that you think does not have any worries but at the same time, trying to keep the objects that you accumulated. This can cause a lot of pain and worry. “Oh no, what will happen if I lose my house? I spent 10 years of my life working for it. How am I going to pay for it or how am I going to get another house again. NOOO!!!” Losing an object can cause severe amounts of pain to the ego. You may even go suicidal because of that pain. Just the idea of losing something often causes severe amounts of anxiety, stress and worry.
The Egoic Mind Pattern Is Always
The egoic mind pattern is always looking for certainty in the future. It needs to know. The mind needs to be certain which will never happen. It is because the mind only knows the past so it looks at the past and tries to create certainty by applying the past to the future. So what happens is that you get the same experience over and over again as if you are preprogrammed to live a life that is never changing and full of worries / problems.
The future can never be certain because there are too many variables and too many possibilities. The mind is too limited. It cannot comprehend nor predict what is going to happen. So the mind may even go to enlightenment as the answer. If I do enlightenment, will I be able to find certainty that I will be happy in the future? The answer to that is ‘no’. The answer is that you will be fine with not knowing. You will be happy not knowing what the future is because you will be more focus and enjoying the present moment.
The mind maybe even say, “that doesn’t sound good. I need to know. I need to be sure. I need to be certain that everything will be fine in the future. I need to know that my company that I built from the ground up will survive. I need to know that I will keep my house in the future. I need to know that I won’t get a disease or die. I need to know that I will be alive and people I care about will be fine.”
The Answer To That
The answer to that is that the world is like a Jenga game. The structures of this world are not stable. Through out history, kingdoms fall, civilizations wiped out, and people gone in an instant. You think your company will survive the test of time? You think your house will survive? You think you will survive? Hell no!! This world is temporary. Everything in this world is temporary. All the structures in this world is temporary. They will all fall down. So you accept it and let it go.
You already know this. The egoic mind just does not want to admit it because the egoic mind wants to keep accumulating and projecting its salvation towards the objects that it will accumulate in the future. It is trying to prevent pain for itself but in doing so, it creates more pain and suffering for itself. Isn’t that funny? People are trying their very best to prevent themselves from experiencing pain and suffering but in doing so, they create more pain and suffering for themselves.
Rather Than Finding Certainty In The Future
Rather than finding certainty in the future, find it in the present moment. The present moment will always be certain and the present moment is the only place where you can find satisfaction. The future and past do not exist other than as thoughts in the head. The past and future are just thoughts, they are not real.
Accept the moment as it is and you will most likely find satisfaction in it. How can I enjoy this moment? The stock market is falling down, I’m about to lose my job, I will never get the house that I wanted, my lover will break up with me, I may even get kicked out of my apartment? How can I accept this? Maybe you are having breakfast and thinking this.
Accept this moment as it is. I did not say accept the story that your mind is telling you. Accept this moment as it is, and in this moment you are eating breakfast. So pay attention to the food that you are eating because that is what is happening right now. Just pay attention to it and you will see that the food is something normal that you eat everyday like eggs but it is satisfying. This moment is satisfying. Then maybe after breakfast you create plan or maybe you already have a plan to keep your house or a temporary place to live in. When it is time to implement that plan then you do it. If you can’t solve or fix the problem then you do the best action that you can. However, in this moment, you are just eating. So eat and enjoy it because there’s nothing else that you can do.
What You Will Notice Is That
After staying and loving the present moment, you will notice that the present moment is very satisfying. There maybe a war going on somewhere, a new president that you don’t like is getting elected, new laws limiting your freedom and so on, but your focus or attention is in this moment. In this moment, everything is good, everything is well in your world.
Maybe I’m eating some food that I love like ramen. I would pay attention to this moment, thoughts would appear like, “this is good stuff, this moment is nice, thank you.” By enjoying the present moment, gratitude can come in. All these loving emotions can come in to your life instead of worry and fear.
You will notice that, it is not the house that will make you happy, it is not the lover that will make you happy, it is not the trip to Hawaii that will make you happy, and so on. It is by paying attention and appreciating the present moment will make you happy. If you can pay attention to the present moment as the day goes by, then it will be a very fulfilling day.
Even if you hate your job like let’s say washing dishes. Everyone hates washing dishes lol. If you pay attention to it and just wash one dish at a time. Focus on the one dish that you are cleaning rather thinking that you should be somewhere else, then it is not that bad. Just by doing one thing at a time, it becomes better rather than listening to the story in the head.
It would still be nice to go to Hawaii, go have a big mansion, or have a lot of money but it is not needed anymore. The world no longer has control over your happiness. You no longer need the material things of this world to satisfy you because you found satisfaction within and not without. You would realize that you create your own joy and your own suffering. Maybe, you will notice also that you may lose all the material things in your life but as long you don’t lose the present moment, you will still feel good and happy.