[mudra]

In each moment we have the potential to be present, or to miss it. If we miss the moment, we never get it back, and when it happened we were essentially dead. Along the journey of evolution, we seemed to picked up the habit of not living in the moment, spending time either in the past, as memories, or in the future, as planning.

Memories and planning are useful, they’re like reference books, allowing us to make sure the right words or details are contained. But we must move out from the books, and engage in the current moment. Regardless of what that moment may be, it is reality, and by living in reality, or the moment, we have access to unlimited choice, and unlimited learning potential.

If we are in the reference system, we live on auto pilot, making the same choice and mistakes, essentially our human nature is gone, and we become machines. We develop habits, that grow in strength, and take away our freedom of choice, creativity- two qualities that make humans so special. The reference system of memory and thought seem so real.

We have these mental conversations in our head with people, playing out scenarios about what he or she says. We feel the emotion and conviction of the conversation, but it’s all a hallucination, there’s no one there. How we are considered sane when doing this remains a mystery to me.

In the same place as the mental conversations, we store memories and pictures, linking emotions such as happiness and anger to the events. We replay our favourite stories to invoke certain emotion at will. We become trapped in a land of fantasy, requiring constant access to the stories to sustain our mood. And as this is taking place, we continue to miss reality, we miss the moments of our life, trading them in for memories that we manipulate and create to our liking.

When we let go of these mental stories and conversations we regain access to the world, we gain access to reality. Our lives become enriched, we experience more, hear more, see more, taste more, all our sense come alive, with friendships becoming alive. Life takes on a dynamic nature, we become empowered with and by Choice and Change. What comes up begins to matter less, regardless of the content we can weather any storm, knowing all will pass, leaving the sky unstained.

We begin to really do what we want to do, we begin to leap, knowing that the net will appear, that we will be safe, and will not only survive but learn and flourish from the experience, regardless. Wisdom is developed, our world understand grows, not from a book point of view but through our direct experience. We begin to breathe lighter and easier, the stories loose their grip, and as a result, we gain stability and ease in the world.

In each moment we have access to this life, we have access to live. This all hit home in the evening gatha that was sung as the last thing before going to bed each night in the monastery.

Author unknown

Love Always
mudra