Don't look back in anger

Yes, I know it's a rip off of the Oasis song, but it's how so many people live their lives: backwards.

At the risk of stating the bleeding obvious, the past is the past.

It's over.

Done.

Finished.

And in case you want to argue otherwise, whatever you think it is, it isn't now: it's just a memory trace which you fuel by (mostly) an unhealthy addiction to your thoughts.

But, as I keep saying over and over, you are not your thoughts. You might think you are but you're not, no more so than your arm, your leg or your heart -- all essential for survival and which make up our supposed being-ness.

The truth is I don't much care if that's where you live. It's your choice.

What I care about is pointing to reality, i.e. True Self, where you live fully present to this moment, in all that it offers.

You might think it's better here than there (in the past). It's not. It's not anything. It's before thinking; it's before you get lost in your thoughts; it's awareness of no-thing.

Be there, now.

No, don't try and turn off your thinking -- as if you could! -- but drop the notion that you need to get anywhere to be anything and witness all that arises -- thoughts, feelings, emotions.

Better still sit in silence for an hour with your eyes open or shut and say nothing, do nothing and stop wishing for anything in particular.

But you won't I bet because you want something to come of it. You want the Big Prize that everyone else is promising; namely, to be this uber version of yourself.

Trust me, sitting still for an hour per day isn't going to give you that. It's not going to give you anything except perhaps a greater awareness of everything that you're not.

In the end though, all of this -- living in the past etc. -- is a choice. You're either willed to enquire within or you're not, and nothing I say will make any difference. But trust me, one day you'll understand that in living out of your thinking and accepting it as true was the day that life passed you by.

Blessings,

Julian