We are always just here.
No matter what we do, where we go, or what we think or feel, we are always just here.
In a way, we can travel around the world and never move an inch.
Walking on the beach with a friend, talking on the phone, or driving to the store, we are never anything but right here. Flying coast to coast the same. Reading the news and watching TV, participating in a political protest, no matter what thoughts and feelings are evoked, we are always here.
Rather than ‘You are here’. It’s always ‘here is you’.
But the mind has a hard time with that. The thought machine and the present moment don’t appear to get along. Investigation, however, will reveal that the apparent separation is an illusion.
You have to wonder why? Why does the mind so resist the present moment?
Does the shift from involvement in thought to the present moment make thought feel like it’s out of a job? And of course, thought really, really thinks it needs a job. Its whole existence is based upon having something, anything to do, all based on an imagined past and future.
In the meditative world, thought and thinking tend to get a bad rap, but obviously, thought is extremely important for human survival and quality of life; to distinguish poisonous plants from safe plants and good chocolate from bad, to look both ways before crossing the street, to invent vaccines that prevent disease and death, to communicate with one another and to make art, music, and poetry. Thought is truly an amazing human faculty.
But despite all its benefits, there’s one small problem with the world of thought: it is based on pictures of reality, and we mistake those pictures for reality, living our lives through images. We essentially live virtual lives, like living life through Instagram. Most of us, most of the time, walk around with the idea that we are single, separate entities in a world filled with billions of other single, separate entities. Of course, every one of these single, separate entities lives, day to day, with a complex and vulnerable picture story of themself. The foundation of meditative inquiry and spiritual awakening is the discovery that we are not single, separate beings. We are, in truth, not separate from one another, nor from the sky and clouds, the stars, planets, and exploding galaxies. We are one with the earth, mountains, and oceans, as well as all the critters, from elephants to ants. The end of identification with thought is the end of the illusion of separation, and awakening to the only reality of here and now.
