The Mind and Self

So connected, like Yin and Yang, the mind and body is a place in time. That place is this moment. We only exist in the moment, our past and future have no life, the only breath is now. A strange revelation but, non the less, true. We own what we do and who we are by way of our confidence. Confidence is funny, it has such contradictions. If I believe I am a millionaire, then I should be a millionaire...why does this not happen? This is very simple, we doubt ourselves. We don't completely believe we are able to be a millionaire so it never happens. This goes for anything in life: without belief there is little success.

We are everything. We are nothing. We are both. We can't trust our minds and our minds can't trust us. We mentally grow based on the thoughts we have and how we react to them. Taking charge of our thoughts and allowing ourselves to have the things we deserve and believing it may be the tallest order a human can ask for. I truly believe that I can have anything I want if I believe I can. This is a progressive understanding and it does not happen by wishing. It is a daily cognitive practice of mind, body and soul.

First and foremost, we, as humans, have a very hard time believing we deserve better things in life. We, by most standards, are addicted to suffering. Somewhere along the line something happened that hindered our ability to love ourselves completely and our confidence was blemished. As time progressed we fell victim to a cycle of failure, loss of confidence and suffering. Many of us have gone through life accumulating and storing each failure as if it were a prized collection. We allowed these shortcoming to become part of who we are and the weight of their amassment only further hurt our confidence.

I know, at one time, I was addicted to suffering. I had a bag of disappointments I carried with me everywhere. Whenever something good would come my way I would mess it up. Whenever I was successful there was always a mental hitch, I would say to myself something like, "you were just lucky" or "you know you don't deserve this." My past failures became part of my present life and with every opportunity to better myself I would somehow mess it up. I would make myself suffer over and over for a mistakes that may have happened 10 years ago. I had a subconscious need to punish myself whenever anything good would happen in my life...it was sick.

Today, I still occasionally fall back into the suffering roll but I am quick to identify it and bring myself back to a rational place. I look around me and I see people suffering everywhere. I see people who work jobs they hate, engage in relationships that are unhealthy, deny themselves of good things because they do not feel worthy of those things and a multitude of other self-loathing chastisements.

Many people live their lives totally in the past. They dwell over things that happened long ago as if they are happening now. They give so much of themselves to their past that they are not here in the present. I also see people who are fortune tellers, they believe they know what is going to happen. They see failure before it happens. They set themselves up for future self bankruptcy. They are so worried about what might happen that they too are not in the present. Some people can do both, this was me. I lived in my past failures and my future shortcomings. I too, was not in the present. We give so much energy to our past and future that there is none left for the present. How can we succeed when we are not present?

Look around sometime, we are surrounded by zombie-like life forms. People who walk around blind of their existence trying to feel their way through a life that is as dark as their self doubt. Yes, their hearts are beating, they are talking, they are walking, they are animate but their present mind is inanimate. I doubt even a tiny faction of those afflicted by these demons will ever read this but I hope the few that do take something from it and spread the awareness around.

The first step to becoming a deserving, happy, life living human is to learn to stay in the moment. This sounds so easy but it is truly difficult. It takes practice to be present. I attain this through meditation. I sit down in a comfortable position. I close my eyes and take long deep breaths. I clear my mind of any thought but one. I say the mantra "here and now" over and over until I am only able to feel the here and now. At this point I am totally relaxed and I start the meditational exercise. I outstretch my arms as if to give someone a big hug. My left arm represents the past, my right arm represents the future, my center point is my mind. I flex my arm muscles and with mental resistance I pull my past and future to my center. As I pull my arm towards my center I envision all the energy I have given to the past and future coming back to my center, my now, my present. I do this 10 times and with each time I envision my energy becoming more and more powerful. I am regaining the energy I lost and it is filling me with self enlightenment. This is a very powerful exercise. Truly believing you are regaining your energies of your old self is liberating, it give one the sense of being able to accomplish anything. We can do anything we want, we only need to be present and believe in ourselves.

Letting go of this bag of failures takes away so much mental weight. Some may have heard the saying "Let go and let God" and whether you believe in God or not you need to have a higher power that you are able to release these past sufferings to. This is another good exercise that will help you become more in the moment is this; close your eyes and imagine all of the your past sufferings, disappointments, failures and anxieties are in a heavy bag, a bag you have been carrying for a long time, the bag is so heavy, it makes it difficult to move, it makes it hard to think of anything but the crushing heaviness. Picture yourself in a peaceful happy place, a place that makes you completely content, see yourself in this place with a massive, heavy bag of crap on your back. You have a choice now, you can keep holding this bag (maybe even add to it) and remain in Hell even though Heaven is all around you or you can just drop the bag. Just let it go. Now I want you to picture yourself in this happy place feeling a new freedom, a joyful weightlessness. Look around you at all the beauty and look down at that sack of sadness. Do you want to pick it back up or do you choose to leave it?

Living in the moment, as I have said, takes practice. When we are able to let go of our past and future we realize that there is a gift waiting for us, we receive the best "present" of our lives.