Living in the present

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Many people, especially those who are walking a spiritual path, will tell you that it is important to live in the present. To put your total focus in this very moment ~ independent  of what you are doing this very moment. Whether you are meditating or doing the dishes doesn’t matter ~ whatever it is you are doing, do it with all of your being...

For me, no matter how hard I try, I never quite manage to do it. To be ‘in the now’. To focus only on what I am actually doing right then and there.
More often than not I find my mind wanders... To the shopping I still need to do. Trying to remember when the last time was I did this thing or the other. To an appointment I have the day after tomorrow.
And pretty soon whatever I am doing goes sort of on an automatic pilot.

I am certain I am not the only one who is doing this ~ and in all reality, what is the harm in it?

The thing is though, that when we are lost in memories ~ good or bad ~ of the past, we do not experience what is happening right now. In a sense, any time we spend pondering things that have already happened, we loose out on the experiences we could have right now.

The same is true for worrying about things yet to come ~ things that may be (or are) in our future.

If we look at our past and future ~ there is nothing we can do about it now.
The past has happened already, and while it has made us into the person we are this very moment, the only thing we can still change about it is our perspective on it ~ how we look at what happened knowing what we know now. Knowing the outcome of events that happened way back when...
The future, on the other hand, isn’t here yet. Whatever might happen cannot be influenced right now. If we need any preparation for a specific event in our future ~ that we can do now; with all of our focus!

The only moment we can affect is now. The only time we can change what is actually happening in our lives is the present.

And that is why it is so important to focus on living in the present. To be in the now.
This is the only moment in which we can not only influence what is happening to us, it is also through living in the present that we can truly experience live as it is happening.
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The Seen and the Unseen

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In this point in time there is an ever greater understanding that there are those things that we can see ~ that take up space, that have weight ~ and those things that we cannot see. That which we cannot see may be just energy, but can also be things that exist on a level of vibration that is not observed by our human eyes.

The energies around us, even though we don’t see them with our physical eyes, we can experience. We can sense or feel for instance, if an energy in a room is comfortable to us. Some places we may not want to stay for very long, not because there is anything that we can see, but because we don’t feel good in that space.

But what about the beings that can be around us while we can’t see them ~ like angels, guides, but also Deva’s and ‘nature spirits’? Are they really there? Even when you can’t see them? And if they are there, can we communicate with them? How would we do that? And how would we be certain of what they are saying ~ after all, if we cannot see them, we may be unlikely to actually hear them too...

From experience I would say yes, we can communicate with that which is around us, even if we can’t see it.
And sometimes, for instance when we feel like the unseen world is encroaching upon our personal space a little bit too much, we just want to tell them to give us our space ~ or even tell them to move on. To find another place to be ~ anywhere else but here.
Other times we may want to instigate more of a ‘conversation’ ~ in other words, we would like to get an answer. We would like to get the perspective of the unseen world on whatever it is that we are experiencing or the situation we find ourselves in.
Now, this is a little trickier in more than one way. First, in order to pick up on that sought after, yet ‘unseen’ perspective, we need to take time to be still and listen. Often the answer will be sensed, or known, rather than heard with our physical ears. Second, and this can be even harder, we need to believe the answer or perspective given to us. Even if we are only sensing something like ‘it will work out for you’, or ‘don’t go there...’, or even just the slightest breeze caressing our face...
When we take time to listen and feel confident in the answer we are given, we may find that the perspectives of the unseen ~ and yes, non-personal ~ world can be really helpful in our lives!

When we communicate with respect, both toward ourselves as well as toward others ~ even when we cannot actually see the others ~ the seen and unseen worlds can work together wonderfully!
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Walking our personal path

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It is an easy thing to say ~ that we are walking our personal paths. And, certainly when we consider our personal path to be a spiritual one, we tend to think that what a personal path entails is totally obvious to everybody who hears the phrase...

Yet when you start thinking about it, what is your personal path? What does it include? What should be part of it? And are there things you encounter on your personal path you wish they weren’t there? What is the use of these things being there in the first place?

Our personal path is exactly that: personal. That means that, while we can talk about the personal paths of others, we can only talk in generalities as the final choices, experience and responsibility are by definition not ours...

In the most general sense one could say that the personal path we walk through life is made up of a string of experiences through which we learn. The idea being that with every experience we gain in knowledge, wisdom, and ultimately spiritual growth.
These experiences usually are not the big grandiose things we may read about in the paper ~ they are the everyday things like how we handle getting stuck in traffic ~ again. Or how we handle people yelling at us. The joy we get from a walk in the forest. All those things tell us something about ourselves. Some of these things we like, other things we may want to change in ourselves ~ and through that process we learn about live and we come to more and more accept who we are as a person.

Now, if a personal path is spiritual in nature ~ what can doing the laundry add to that? What is spiritual in doing household chores?
What it boils down to is that while walking our personal paths it is not necessarily about the things we do and when we do them ~ it is how we handle, how we react to those things... When we find ourselves getting grumpy because we need to do a sheer unending amount of household chores that keep us from doing the fun things in life ~ we may find that these chores take longer ~ that we spend more energy on them ~ than they need to. From a personal path perspective, we may want to change something like that... The same goes for getting stuck in traffic ~ if we get highly frustrated every time that happens, we may want to ask ourselves why it is bothering us so much and make changes to our schedule or our attitude (or both) accordingly...

On thing is certain though, we can only affect our own personal path.
And we shouldn’t judge others on how they are walking their paths ~ unless we have walked a mile in their moccasins...
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Predictions

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Every so often a prediction pops up that the end of the world is coming.
The basis for these predictions may lie in channeled information or in biblical interpretation. Or in the fact that the Maya Calendar stops in the year 2012...

The big question, at least from a practical point of view is: why now?
There are a lot of things in the world of today that are considered to be ‘bad’. There is still a lot of fighting going on. Fighting for a cause as well as fighting as a release for frustrations that perhaps have been building for years and years... Although slavery in the traditional sense of the word is not common anymore ~ it seems to have been replaced by a different form of slavery. ‘People trafficing’ has become an industry.
Yes, our world would be a lot better place to be if all those things were not happening.
On the other hand, there is also an enormous drive to change things. To make things better. To rebuild and reform...

And all of this is taking place around the same time the Maya Calendar reaches its end.

It is easy to come to the conclusion that our days are counted and the end is near.
Or is it?

It makes a huge difference whether one predicts: “The end of the world” ~ or “The end of the world as we know it”.

“The end of the world” implies that the earth itself will cease to exist. And while there are most definitely changes going on with our planet ~ its weather patterns, its landmasses even ~ the destruction of the earth doesn’t seem to be imminent to me.

“The end of the earth as we know it” ~ now that is a completely different perspective.
Seeing the tremendous changes that are going on on a small scale in people’s personal lives as well as on a global scale ~ does seem to indicate that we are on the beginning of a time ~ an age even ~ that may well be totally different from what we as humanity has experienced up to now!

The question that remains however, is if this change  linked to a specific date. Would it be possible to have just one moment, one morning when every single person in the world wakes up with the realization that the new time, the new perspectives, the new energy has come? Or is it more likely to be a process? And if it is a process ~ has it started already or are we still waiting for its beginning?

Maybe the Mayans had the most sensible perspective on this yet: If the world, both the earth and humanity, are changing to such extend that a new world will emerge ~ than what would be the use of continuing this Calendar that is based on the world as we know it?
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The predicament of predicting...

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It is hard to foretell the outcome of anything ~ whether it is the outcome of a situation, the outcome of an election or even if what you are looking at is ‘the future’ on a much broader scale.
Or, as it turns out, it is not making the prediction itself the hard part ~ it is the prediction being factually true that turns out to be almost impossible...

There are many reasons why we, even with all the technical help we have nowadays such as computers, are still unable to see those things that haven’t happened yet with great accuracy.

To start with, there are thousands, if not millions of possibilities for something to happen let’s say at a certain time in the future. Statistically, picking the one that will turn out to be factually accurate gives very slim odds.
Another, more personal thing that makes it hard to see what is in the future is that it is very hard for us to see an outcome that we would never have thought of. An outcome we have a hard time imagining...

These two reasons also show the duality in our approach.
On one hand if we have all the information ~ including how the people involved are thinking about it or what they are hoping for the outcome to be ~ leading up to the outcome, even if that outcome is something that is a future event; we would probably be able to figure it out logically. That is where computers come in handy. The problem here is that we never really have all that information...
Coming from the other side, our intuition, our sense, feeling can give us a lot of information on where the situation may be leading us. We may even have visions showing us possible outcomes of that situation. Yet if the outcome is totally different from what we can imagine, or believe it to be ~ all our intuitive, sensory information on the outcome isn’t doing us any good...

And yet we keep attempting to ‘know the future’. To predict what is going to happen ~ be it just in our personal or family lives, or on a world scale.

And knowing what would be the outcome would likely give us a sense of security. A sense that we can take action toward that known outcome, and be ready for it when it happens.

The thing is, that just by focussing on that one outcome that we ‘know to be true’ ~ especially if we start focussing on it with a large number of people ~ chances are that we start manifesting it into our lives, into the world.
If the outcome we envision is a bad outcome, we may not want to do that for obvious reasons.
If we sense and know the outcome we predict is a good outcome, in focussing just on that one possibility we may block an even better outcome to emerge...

Perhaps that is why it is said that the value we find on our path is in the journey itself, rather than the outcome...
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