I want to write something about time.
The Ego Needs Time
The ego needs time. It needs future. “Future me will be amazing. I will have everything I ever wanted. I will become famous, become rich, become fulfilled, become satisfied, and I will feel good always!” What about now? “Now? Now is messed up, now is not good because I have not accomplished anything, I have not become anything. I have to accumulate all of these things that will make me feel good so that I will feel happy, safe and satisfied always.”
When the ego gets any of these, it will feel good. It will feel satisfied but only for some time. It will be temporary. It will go to the same old mind pattern again. “This is not it. I need more. I need more fame, people are forgetting about me. I need more money. People need to be impressed by me. They need to acknowledge my greatness more.”
Of course, there is no ups without downs in this world. No matter where you are, always the downs. Even if you become rich, you will still have problems. There is no good or everlasting situation that the ego will find itself fulfilled or satisfied. Always something that stresses the ego as such it needs more wealth, more health, more knowledge, more money and so on.
Without Future
Without future, the ego cannot complete the “story of me.” “If I complete the story of me, all of my friends will become amazed at who I have become. They will think highly of me. All those girls that rejected me will regret it. They will grovel at my feet. All those people who thought I couldn’t make it will be begging me for money.”
“Yes! I need to complete my story so other people will look at me differently. They will finally see how amazing I am and how I am different from them.”
In a way, I need to do something about myself or situation so that other people’s opinion of me will be different. If people look at me differently or people have a different opinion about who I am then I will be happy. If these people think I am amazing then I will feel good about myself. I need to control their minds and how they look at me. Only way to do that is to do something about myself. So I need “future me” to happen.
The “image of me” is important to the ego. I need others to think a certain way when it comes to me. When other people think a certain way about me, it is very fulfilling and satisfying to me which is insane. If they think of me in a negative way, I feel bad. I need these people to think that I’m rich, wealthy, happy and so on. If they think that I am this, I will be happy which is really what is happening in instagram. I have this fake life or fake image that I want to present to others so they will think of me in a certain way.
Maybe It Will Happen
“I HAVE ARRIVED!! I HAVE SUCCEEDED!”
All of these girls are now groveling at my feet like I wanted them to. You should have gone out with me, your life would have been better. All these people who doubted me are all begging me for money!!! They are all regretting it now. This feels so good!! I feel so happy!!! I feel like I’m in cloud 9 or in heaven. Everyone must feel this way. Everyone work hard and become something and you will all be like me!!!
Of course, after a while, the ego does not feel good anymore. It needs more. It needs something else. “This is not it, this is not what I expected or wanted. I need more.” “I need rich girls to reject me now. I need new friends that will think I cannot do something and prove them all wrong.” If I go through the same thing again I will feel more satisfied and happy this time around. I need more drama. Give me more drama in my life!!! I need more drama so I can be on top again.
Maybe it doesn’t go like that. Maybe it will be more quiet. “Okay I feel good now but this won’t last long. I need to accomplish something better or I need to do something else. It will make future me even better or the story of me will become even more amazing”
Present Moment
You don’t need future to feel good about yourself nor to feel safe. The future will always be uncertain. COVID proved that. You can only feel good in the present moment. When your focus is on the present moment, it feels good because you are alive, and you have everything you need to survive. If you focus on the future, you have lack, you have uncertainty. So only in the present moment, you will feel satisfaction, gratefulness and all the other loving emotions. If your focus goes to the future, you will lose all these good feelings because they get overpowered by fear.
Even when you accomplish everything that you have dreamed of, you need to be in the present moment to feel good about it. This is usually what happens, when you accomplish something, you put your focus on the present moment so it feels good but as time progresses, you go back to the future again. Back to this psychological concept of “time” which means you lose the present moment and went back to uncertainty.
The Ego Needs Time
The ego is lost in its own psychological concept of time. The ego needs time to complete itself, complete the story but in reality you don’t need time to feel complete, to feel good, to feel satisfied. The certainty that you want is right here, right now. The joy, love, and good feelings that you want is right here, right now.
You Are Full Of Crap
Some of you are going to be like that. This is full of crap. If I can get out of this job then I’ll be happy. These people are the ones that is making me unhappy. But that is the thing, it is highly likely “you” that is the problem and not them. The ego needs drama, it needs conflict to survive. Without conflict, the ego will die. It needs to be strengthened so it creates conflict. So it replays scenarios that are unpleasant over and over in the head. It creates enemies, scenarios, and fantasies to feel superior, right and good.
“I should have said that. Next time I get into an argument with this person, I will say this. I didn’t say it but next time I will say it. It is a good come back. Why didn’t I say it. I would have showed her or him.”
If You Put People In Paradise
If you put people in paradise and give them everything they need, the first thing they will do is break stuff because they need drama and conflict to happen. They won’t be able to appreciate it nor see it.
This is easy to see in the USA also. In the USA, there’s an abundance of food. You can go out and find really delicious foods at a fast food place or cook it yourself. Deliveries are even easier now due to technology. Most people make enough to be able to afford these foods where in other countries, these are like for rich people only. Like in the Philippines, if you eat in Starbucks, you are considered wealthy.
Anyway, if you have everything you need to survive for 1 year or maybe 5 years, what is there for you to do other than to create conflict. “These people do not have the same ideas as us, so we need to kill them.” or “These people do not think like us, they need to die.”
“These people do not believe in the same God as us, they are infidels, they are non-believers, they need to die.”
“These people are witches! They believe something else. They need to be burned on a stake.”
“These people do not think like us, they are Republicans. They need to die. If all of them die, the world will be a better place.”
“This is the same for work also. If my co-workers think the same way I do, they will not cause me anymore problems but they are idiots.”
“My co-workers have no manners. I need to teach them a lesson about manners because I know better than them. If they learn manners, my life will be better.”
“I am right, they are wrong. Wrong people need to learn to be right. If they are wrong, I can talk down to them, yell at them, punish them, and be as unloving as I want to them. I’m teaching them a lesson which is good for them.”
Who would you be without your enemies?
Who would you be without your enemies? You cannot be right without an enemy. You cannot feel superior without one either. If your co-workers are all perfect, you will feel inferior. You will worry about getting replaced or fired if you are the weakest one. If they are idiots, you can feel superior so you end up complaining more and more. You tell everyone how messed up other people are so that you would feel good about yourself.
Who would you be if the ones you are complaining about are the total opposites? If this person is different, then this other person will be affected and so on. How all of these will affect me? That is something to think about.
If you take away the Internet, the shows, the entertainment, people will die of boredom. They cannot handle peace. They will start creating conflict. There’s nothing else to do. People need drama in their lives. They need conflict. The ego needs to feel right. The ego needs to feel superior. So who would you be without your enemies? You cannot survive.
This is how cults and some religions define themselves. We are the correct religion, these other ones are false. By saying that these other religions are false, they give themselves an identity which is the right one. Without any false religions, who would they be? They will have nothing. They won’t have the “I am right” identity anymore. Without enemies, they will be nothing. If you are not the “right religion” then you will be the same as the other religion. Nothing special about your religion anymore.
You Don’t Need Time
You don’t need time to know who you are or to find yourself. In my enlightenment or experience, you are an eternal being that doesn’t need anything. You are complete, perfect, nothing is needed, nothing is withheld. You are so powerful that you can create your own lack in your mind. You can go through all these “idols” that you think will make you happy or complete. None of them will do it. They will give a temporary feeling of satisfaction then disappear again. You can work hard and sacrifice a lot for one year to only enjoy it for 1 week or maybe even one day then you go back to the old egoic pattern of lack and need.
Ever Seen The Movie
It was a good movie when I was a teenager. They kept replaying it over and over since there was no Internet back then. I feel so old now hahaha. Anyway, there was this guy who hated this town and then he got stuck reliving the same day over and over. At first, he tried to accumulate everything he ever wanted. He stole a lot of money and got away with it, slept with a lot of women, he beat up everyone but since he relives the same day over and over, he does not get to keep the money and things he accumulates. He got into depression. He hated the town, he hated himself, he hated everything, he hated every day. No matter what he does, he kept reliving the same day over and over.
He then made a decision to enjoy it, to enjoy the town, and enjoy the people in it. He had a great time. It was the way he got out of reliving the same day when he didn’t want to get out of the town anymore.
It will be the same for a lot of people. The only way to get out of your work, get out of your situation, is when you no longer need to get out. Even better if you don’t want to get out. I’m not saying all situations or work situations are going to be like that but a lot of it are going to be like that.
Most of the time, you just need to look at things differently. It was the antiaging practice, or spiritual practice or loving practice that I said before. If you feel bad, you should rethink the situation because you are most likely looking at it the wrong way.
Living In A State Of Constant Struggle, Unease, Fear
The ego lives in this constant state of struggle, unease, and fear. It is because the ego needs the future so it is not satisfied with what it has right now. What it has is not enough. So the person needs to accumulate more, keep on accumulating till the ego is satisfied, which is why there is need for the future. The need to complete the collection, complete the story of me, complete the accumulated objects. What is worst is that people and situations can take away what the ego has accumulated.
So what you have right now isn’t that satisfying, but at the same time, it can be taken away also. So the ego lives in uncertainty. When can I get the objects that will complete me? Will the objects I have be taken away in the future? It is not as good as I want these objects to be but I don’t want to lose them until I can replace them.
It is like the world has taken hostage the happiness that the ego has and the ego has to fight the world to get it back. But the world can also take more objects away so the ego lives in this constant fear, constant struggle, constant accumulation so that the things it has cannot be taken away.
Whenever the ego meets someone, it has compare itself. Is this person smarter than me, better at sports than me, does he have more money than me, better at my job than me, can this person take away my job, and so on. Constant comparisons, judgments, superiority, inferiority and so on.
When It Is Too Much
When it hurts really bad and your guidance or heart is telling you something else, the only possible solution that the ego thinks of is to drown the thoughts with some form of entertainment or intoxication.
She left me, I need to drink myself to forget these feelings and thoughts. I need weed to forget the life I am living. I need some form of entertainment to distract the mind from these thoughts.
In enlightenment, it does not even say to forget these thoughts or feelings, it just says maybe you should look at it in a different way or maybe you are looking at this in an unloving way that is not true. These “idols”, they are not real. There’s no such thing as something that will make you happy forever, satisfied or fulfilled forever because you are the one who gave yourself the feeling of lack or incompleteness. It never existed in the first place until you gave it to yourself.
You Really Don’t Need More Time
How much time do you need to stop all of these non-sense, craziness, unloving way of looking at the world? The ego would reply, I need more time. I need more time to love my co-workers, need more time to look at things differently, I need more time to do my spiritual practice. I will take my spiritual or loving practice seriously when I’m in Hawaii or in a spa where everything is nice and good. Right now? Right now is not good, I can’t deal with my co-workers, can’t deal with the traffic, can’t deal with my lover, can’t deal with my parents and so on. I need more time.
It is the same pattern. I’ll be happy when I’m in Hawaii or in the future. Now? Right now is not good. Right now is terrible.
All Is Well, All Is Good
All is well, all is good, always. The outside world is neutral. It is how you are looking at it. The outside world is dependent on how you are looking at it. In my enlightenment, we are eternal and present moment is eternal. It is not really “my” enlightenment but I’m saying it like that to make it personal so that other people can understand but it is not really “my” enlightenment. It is more like universal. But anyway, eternal people can be anything they want. They can be poor, rich, man, woman, gay, lesbian, asian, black, white, good guy, bad guy, cop, robber and so on. So all situations are good.
Even if we look at it in a logical way. You are the creator of your own emotions and your own mind. Everything you create you have to take responsibility for it or create new emotions, new thoughts and so on. You always have the power.