http://www.care2.com/greenliving/create-present-reality.html
Create Present Reality
We all have a deep psychological drive to keep pace with the impulse of creation. There are needs that can and should be satisfied in the present…Among these is every human being’s central need to express himself – to show himself to the world as he really is – in word, in gesture, in behavior, in every genuine utterance from the baby’s cry to the artist’s creation.
The key to this inspiring affirmation is that life needs to be satisfying in the present. It is not that easy to define “the present,” however. From one perspective the present is the thinnest possible slice of time, the fleeting instant that allows the future to flip-flop into the past.
From the opposite perspective, the present is eternal, because it is ever-renewing, like a river that is never the same twice.
To create paradise could mean nothing more or less than living in the present, enjoying the happiness that is both now and forever – but who can manage that? The boundaries that the human mind lives within are invariably fashioned from the past.
It is yesterday’s hurt that I am defending against today, last year’s glory I want to relive, a bygone love I want to find again. The boundary-maker who wields such enormous power over us is the intellect, the part of the mind that judges and categorizes our experiences.
The number of questions that arise over the tiniest experience is awe inspiring. Once each decision is made, it gets filed away in memory, to serve as a reference point for future experience.
By endless interpreting the world in bits and pieces, we are losing it at every instant, allowing it to slip through our fingers like sand. To have reality that is whole and thus truly real, one must rise above the intellect, discarding its neat slices of experience. Like day-old bread, they only go stale anyway.
Adapted from Unconditional Life: Discovering the Power to Fulfill Your Dreams, by Deepak Chopra (A Bantam Book, 1991).
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add your comment »Thank you so much! This has helped me more than anyone could imagine!
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BE VERY CAREFUL how you manipulate your own emotions! Because, when you base your life on emotional experiences, when those emotions turn sour and flee from you, when joy is not found, you will become the walking dead, unable to find a reason to live, because your emotions have turned against you. Be careful what you read!
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Please note associated news story at Care2...Thanks :)
http://www.care2.com/news/member/979852695/1233772
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The other day I saw a picture of myself from a few years ago. I was singing in a fairly popular band at the time and the pic was of me onstage, with the crowd singing along and everyone partying and having a great time. It reminded me of how perfectly confident and content I was in that moment. No past, no future, just truly sharing a joyous moment. I've been wondering if I can replicate that feeling in my daily life - when my bosses throw their stress at me, when my 6 month old is crying in the night from teething, when yet another person I know dies from cancer. I've realized that I can indeed "make" myself present, make myself enjoy the moment - just by reminding myself to, like the Ray L song says, "Be Here Now."
That, for me, makes all the philobabble about duality make sense.
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Danielle:
I can very much identify with your concept about releasing pain. It isn't easy but possible. Permit me to tell you the end result can be a beautiful thing, and life definitely goes on, big time. My aim is never to forget, but to view from a different perspective, it works, at least for me.
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As we refine ourselves our needs change and the universe mirrors our new perspective.Deep change doesn't occur while we're watching for it,the changing tides of our focus bring forth the new. From periods of intense inner focus battling to get to the base of the core beliefs that are keeping us from the sought changes,to turning our attention outward to the needs and challenges that physical survival requires.Forgetting the inner work allows the changes to occur,they are always seen in retrospect. While "peeling the onion",making the inner changes to allow fulfillment in those areas there is an illusion of constant disappointment; no matter the changes it seems we've made we are reminded that those beliefs are still operating though we have challenged them and proved to ourselves that they're detrimental the proof is in our faces that they're not changed .There's only so far you can go with reason and logic. It serves the purpose to bring us to the verge of change.Beliefs cluster around cores of raw emotion that don't respond to reason. Once led to that edge only powerful revulsion and rejection implodes the core. A baby hissy fit does the job,the two year old two step,hopping from foot to foot screaming NO NO NO, the tantrum leaving you exhausted is what's required at the core of nastiness as it tells you how unworthy you are and you think it's true because it's in your own voice; you move ahead with your life and when you turn around to take stock everything has changed.
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Funny, I've always thought of myself as a creator. Maybe cause I'm an artist. I have a bizarre manifesting existence. foflol I just am dying laffing at myself. I am creating a big joke of myself! YOU LIKED my communique! lol I'm going nuts here. I am living in a vacuum...help me I'm getting sucked awayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy into the vacuum bag of life. Somebody better send me a big mallet to hit myself in the head with so I feel better. This is screwy. Any reality out there?
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Unfortunately evolution or development over the ages or whatever you want to call it has pre-conditioned the psychie to make decisions based on past experiences. So you're a cave man. You watch your brother eaten by a lion and you know to avoid lions.
Today you are hurt by a lover and you avoid loving contact. Memory is good and it is bad I suppose, making it difficult to lay in a lover's arms and just live for the sheer joy of the moment without worrying about the time when those arms won't be there.
Forgetting is hard and releasing old pain is even more so. That is the journey of life, the essence, the purpose, the reason, because in the end do not we all return to the place we began? And hurt turns out to be the lesson that taught us what Love truly was, just by sheer contrast?
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Hey, where "thing" showed up, it should be "think". My computer is very jumpy, today.
Janine, you did a superior job of communicating your message, would you believe I think I have it?
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