The Ultimate Source of Wisdom and Balance

There are some patterns in the mind that everybody inherits that even for advanced presence, practitioners like yourselves can still reassert themselves because they are so normal. By the way, my definition of normal is insane, as you probably know. And you may be able to catch yourself many times during the day when this normal, one of these normal patterns reasserts itself. And of course, one of the most prevalent patterns is reducing the present moment to a means to an end. It could be a simple thing like you get up in the morning and you're getting ready to go to work. What is the quality of your doing during that time of getting ready to go out? Or here you got up this morning, getting ready to go to breakfast and then come here. How do you experience that time? Are you able to be present in what you're doing? Or is the doing no more than a means to an end? Now, that's a huge difference whether you fold your pajama after and put it on your bed. Is that. Do you give it attention? Is it a pleasant thing to do? Do you acknowledge the being of this pyjama and feel the texture and give it some loving attention and then you put it away? Or is it, what's the next thing and the next and the next? Because I need to get. I need to. If you're not, you may. If you don't, this habit is always there. The present moment is the stepping stone. And not much more than a stepping stone to the next moment, which is always a mental projection, because it never comes. The next moment never comes, does it? No, I don't think it does. Because when the next moment comes, it's the present moment. So the next moment doesn't come, can never arrive. There's only this moment. But if your habit is to treat this moment most of the time as a means of getting to the next moment, so not being fully in it, but mentally being somewhere else, and then just need. So the basic attitude is I just need to get this moment out of the way, then I will get to a better one. And that is a very deep seated pattern that prevents you from being present. But it's only when I voice it like this that it becomes apparent to you, because otherwise you won't even see it. Because it's so normal to live in such a way that unconsciously it's not. You don't. You don't tell yourself in your mind that I just need to get this moment out of the way because the next one will be better. That is an unspoken and unconscious assumption behind what you do. And it's not only people also treat entire life periods in that way. Then it's not only, of course, most fundamentally, the present moment, but they also treat entire chunks of their life in that way. For example, you're waiting for the weekend, so it's only two more days of having to go to work, and then there comes or you're waiting for something else, getting a better job, finding the person who is going to make me happy. In the meantime, I'm just ticking over. It's just I'm just waiting for, well, what's the expression? I'm waiting for the big break or whatever. I'm waiting for the big thing to happen. And finally I can start living. When that happens, whatever form that takes, when that happens, then my life will really start. And that's another way, another manifestation of the same dysfunction. It.