Thought 193: Living in the present is difficult

It is not easy for any one to focus exclusively on any one topic for a reasonable length of time. The nature of the mind is flighty and erratic. It does not like to focus – it enjoys getting distracted. It is like a wild monkey – hopping constantly from one branch to another, randomly.

For instance, while you are in a movie theater, does not your mind drift to the various things that you forgot to do before starting out for the theater or things that you will have to do, as soon as you return home? Have you ever been able to enjoy the movie without any of these distractions? When you are walking, instead of enjoying the walking and the scenario around you, are you not constantly talking to your self, about things that have no connection to the walking or the scenario which is right in front of your eyes? While reading a newspaper, does not your mind suddenly drift over, say for instance, to the things that have been causing you worry at the place of work? While driving to your work, do you recall the times that you escaped getting into accidents because your attention was not on the driving, but was wandering constantly?

Unless, you train your mind properly, it is almost impossible for you to keep it focused on any given topic. Mind simply refuses to focus on any given topic - not even for a few seconds at a time. It never allows you to enjoy the present. Present passes into the past - and if not into the past, it goes into the future, so quickly that you hardly ever notice its surreptitious passage. You feel as if present never seems to arrive for you.

Let us call the interval of time, which merges so quickly with the past or the future without you being aware of it, as "dt" - a very useful concept of calculus. The concept is that this "dt" is infinitely small. This "dt" is the "present" that you have been missing.

The next thought is about “Resistances in the mind”

Thought 192: Life is meant to be enjoyed

There is more to life than spending all your time worrying about the future or feeling guilty over the past. You must enjoy friendships, relationships, your work, hobbies, the bliss of marriage and children, exercise, entertainment, vacation, nature, gardening, reading and a host of other things that make life colorful, fulfilled and exciting. You can experience all these wonderful things provided you stop living in the past and future - and start living in the present.

It is believed that a human being is a single input device. When you are focusing on doing some thing at this moment, you cannot do or think of any thing else. If this is so, then, living in the present becomes a very interesting experience. Suppose, you are able to concentrate completely in reading a book. If you fully focus on this reading, how can you worry at the same time, about some thing that is going to happen in future? You will, then, experience the joy of reading. Similarly, if you are playing tennis and you are thoroughly immersed in the joy of playing, how can you feel guilty, at the same time, about things that happened a while ago? You feel the exhilaration of playing tennis only when you are immersed in it completely and exclusively.

The next thought is about “Living in the present is difficult”

Thought 191: Those who run away from the Present have no where to hide comfortably

Most people facing a difficult situation today would start imagining that their lives are going to be like this for ever and get immobilized over this unrealistic scenario that they paint for themselves. They would build continuously over these imagined difficulties and fears - keep on magnifying them. The negative and unrealistic scenario that they have painted for themselves, frightens them so much, that they begin to hide in the future.

When you are afraid to face the realities of the present, you want to somehow run away, as soon as possible, to your safe haven, which is the future. Such persons know that they are safe in the future because it never happens - it is only the present that happens in reality. You want to hide in the future for fear of the reality of the present. Such persons never realize that life's processes are never static – they are always dynamic. Circumstances keep changing constantly and if they have a difficult period today, they are going to have a happy period tomorrow. Night must be followed by day. This is Nature's law.

Again, when they are in the future, they begin to imagine that it is also pregnant with several calamities. Since you have a low self-esteem, you feel that you cannot cope with those calamities. Such persons are also not happy being in the future. They feel devastated sometimes. In bewilderment, they run now hopefully back to the past. When they are in the past, they start feeling guilty about their past mistakes. Thus, they find that they are not happy being in the past either. They are not peaceful and happy – in any time period. When one keeps running back and forth in this manner, between future and past, life virtually becomes intolerable for this person; the quality of life fro such persons is obviously very poor.

If you are always living either in the past or in the future, when will you live in the present and experience the joy of living? Why do you like to see yourself always in a flashback? If not the flashback, you like to sit in the time machine and simulate future in it.

The next thought is about Life is meant to be enjoyed

Thought 190: Insecurity breeds fear

Fear of the unknown perhaps is one single big cause of all neurotic behavior. Dr Joseph Murphy in his book, "The Power Of Your Subconscious Mind", writes, that there are only two fears with which a person is born. These are, the fear of falling down and the fear of noise. All other fears are acquired. Dr Robert Anthony writes in his book "Super Persuation" that you will have no confidence in your self - and you will feel insecure, mostly because of four fears, and they are fear of failure, fear of appearing ridiculous, fear of exposing the ego to hurt and fear of rejection.

Most of us have a measure of insecurity within us and some people have a tendency to get neurotically concerned over it. You worry excessively about future events in your life –
what happens if you get sick,
how can you support your family if you lose your job,
what if your son gets into bad company and takes to drugs,
what if you suffer a loss in your investments

and so goes on the list of imagined calamities. Such fears are called irrational fears. This fear psychosis due to irrational fears becomes more and more intense, when you begin to live in dread of the future. This is usually the result of, amongst other things, low self esteem.

The next thought is about “Those who run away from the Present have no where to hide comfortably”

Thought 189: You were programmed as a child

When a child is born, it comes into this world with a clean slate. It has no knowledge about this world. It is eager to learn about the world it has come to live in and therefore, tries to learn as fast as it can. Starting from the moment it is born, it observes every thing around it very keenly, which is how it learns. The fact that it does not know the language does not really stop its learning process. It is now accepted that even for the adults, the words carry only about 8% of the message. The rest is carried through the body and voice languages - and the child is good at reading the body and voice languages.

Most people are conditioned from early childhood to focus on the negatives. Parents, who are the role models for the child, constantly display negatives, which the child readily absorbs. Worry, anxiety, guilt, impatience, criticism, anger, hatred, greed, revenge, jealousy, excessive ego, self pity, are some of the negatives that constantly pervade the conversation of the parents, teachers, baby sitters and others, such as relatives and friends of parents, in the presence of the child. All these are picked by the sensitive antennae of the child and they are entered permanently into its mind.

Thus, although the child is born without any negatives, it gradually picks these destructive negatives before it is four years old. It gets programmed on this basis and this is the software that drives the child all through the later years of its life. This becomes the foundation for the quality of one’s life. No attempt is ever made later to unlearn or cancel the effect of these negatives.

This early childhood negative foundation constantly undercuts your attempts to learn a new way of life later. It keeps away creativity from you, because creativity has to be nurtured in a supporting environment, in which, open mindedness, cheerfulness, encouragement and similar positive attitudes prevail. Very rarely, however, does the child observe these and similar positive attitudes such as love for others, positive views about people in general, tolerance for different views, sense of humor, confidence, tranquility, excellence, perfection, etc in her young life. The child is hardly ever encouraged to look at nature and appreciate it. It does not learn to wonder about the magnificent creation around it, like the flowers or the rainbow or moonlight or any such natural, delightful and beautiful phenomena of this world. In those rare families, where the child gets exposed to positive views, that child, of course, grows up based on that foundation.

The next thought is about “Insecurity breeds fear”