Are you so busy in getting to the future that the present moment is reduced to a means of getting there? Stress is caused by being ‘here’ but wanting to be ‘there,’ or being in the present but wanting to be in the future. It is a split that tears you apart inside
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
The aim of meditation then, is to let go of the conditions of the mind. This doesn’t mean denying, getting rid of, or judging them. It means not believing them or following them. Instead we listen to them as conditions of the mind that arise and cease. We learn to trust in just being the listener, the watcher, with an attitude of awakened, attentive awareness, rather than be somebody trying to meditate to get some kind of result. Then through mindfulness we are able to get beyond the conditioning of the mind to the pure consciousness that isn’t conditioned, but which is like the background, the emptiness, the blank sheet on which words are written. Our perceptions arise and cease on that blank sheet, that emptiness.
Ajahn Sumedho, True but not right, Right but not true
One of the fundamental ways of bringing the mind into the present moment is to focus on how we sense our own body. This bodily sense – that is awareness of the sensations and energies that manifest in the body – is something immediate that we can contemplate. It gives us ground and balance. It gives us the sense of being where we are. Although this may seem basic and obvious, much of the time we are not grounded in where we really are. Instead we are ‘out there’ in a world of changing circumstance and reactions to that, without having a central reference.
Ajahn Sucitto, Meditation: A Way of Awakening
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Don’t go looking elsewhere. Let go of all those ideas about lacking something or needing to attain something
The core essence of it all [life].. is to be who you already are – rather than get lost in who you are afraid you are, or think you might be and want to be – in the only moment we ever get, which is just this one. That’s easy to say, but it’s a non-trivial thing to actually engage in.
Jon Kabat Zinn
Be strong then, and enter into your own body;
there you have a solid place for your feet.
Just throw away all thoughts of
imaginary things,
and stand firm in that which you are.
Kabir
Here in my head, language
keeps making its tiny noises.
How can I hope to be friends
with the hard white stars
whose flaring and hissing are not speech
but a pure radiance?
How can I hope to be friends
with the yawning spaces between them
where nothing, ever, is spoken?
…What can we do
but keep on breathing in and out,
modest and willing, and in our places?
Mary Oliver, Stars
Our psychological work is to journey from the chaos of our personal unconscious to a coherent conscious integration. Our spiritual path then takes us to the treasures of the cosmic, collective unconscious and full individuation. Everything in our lives, no matter how terrible, exists in relation to an inner healing force. “The journey with father and mother up and down many ladders represents the making conscious of infantile concerns that have not yet been integrated…The personal unconscious must always be dealt with first…otherwise the gateway to the collective unconscious cannot be opened”, Jung tells us. Our work as adults is thus an heroic journey, since a hero is anyone who has lived through pain and been transformed by it.
David Richo, How to Be an Adult
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