To fully live and enjoy life, deserving of health, wealth, and wellness, we have to understand how fear governs every aspect. Many of us make life choices out of fear and not love, resulting in regret, shame, and guilt. Living is self-protection against a perceived enemy (it can be an individual, society, community, or the whole world) is living in constant anxiety of What-Will-Happen-If.
Even the slightest movement away from here-now causes unhappiness. It doesn’t mean that we have to force attention here all the time. The forcing itself is an action directed by What-Will-Happen-If. It is simply a matter of coming back to our natural state of relaxation. If one is more contemplative and attentive, disregarding any movement away from the relaxing here-now becomes one’s spiritual practice or sadhana.
The fragmented separative mind operating out of fear acts compulsively and make spans judgements and decisions only to regret later. It draws attention by painting a rosy picture of an imaginary future. In other words, it thrives on time movement (past or future) causing anxiety. Presence is the direct observation of What-Is. There is no time involved in presence. There is no measure between “I am this” right now, and I should be “that” in future. There is no future. That’s why presence is the greatest gift you can offer to humanity.
Most don’t live out of presence but fear. That’s why we have wars, violence, communal hatred and racial tensions. That’s why we have divisions in the name of race, caste, creed, gender, ethnicity, and so on. There’s no capacity to love when one is caught up in fear. Fear divides! A fearful mind wants to safeguard itself by locking the heart. In psychology, this is called fight-flight. We want to be anywhere but here. Why? Because being here feels unbearable. We contemplate escapes using substances, sex, devices, and sometimes even reading. Avoidance feels safer than connection. Distance feels safer than closeness. No matter where we go or whatever we do, we cannot escape “this-here-now.”
Look at the generosity of the heart. Even while it knows that the fearful mind is trying to cage it, the heart allows for it. However, that caging causes immense suffering because the heart’s nature is to be open. The heart lives in the here-now as the self-luminous presence. The ultimate destiny of the fearful mind is to rest and merge with the heart.
With love,
Jagjot
