Through remaining in the present, we can let go of the past and the future - the headquarters of our fears.
Lama tsony
******************
Hello Frosty
******************
"Watchman, tell us of the night."
It's night now, or it's day, or it's both.
---------------------------------
I enjoy reading history. History is about events. But even more history is about people, people make the events happen. If you read enough history you get the accurate impression that the human race has been at war with itself ever since the first cave man picked up a rock and threw it at someone.
You've heard the axiom "history repeats itself" and you've probably also heard that if people aren't aware of history they are in danger of repeating it. Well they apparently repeat it anyway even if they are aware. It's that repetition of events that makes history interesting to me. It means that history for me is not a linear study.
Read a newspaper, if you can find a newspaper in this E age, and you will find that all the things that have ever gone on are going on right now. The past is just the present with dust on it. And that leads me into considering the present as the only reality, which it is.
Why should we fear the past? Or why should we fear because there is a past? Most of it is a bucket of ashes and what remains should be laughed at. You made some events happen, some of them were successful and some were failures, and that about sums it up. Did you learn something from your mistakes. Good. Then that's what the past is for. Now forget it.
Why should we fear the future, or fear because there is a future? As someone said, the future is much like the present only longer. By an amazing bit of alchemy the present turns into the past just as fast as it turns into the future. And that's what makes the present, today, this hour, so important. If you do it wrong you may have a regret or two, something else to put into the bucket of ashes. But what ever you do, whatever event you make happen, it will define your future. You're making history. And once done it's best to let go of it. When you throw the rock you don't run after it to make sure it hits the target. It hits or it misses. Get on with life.
Another important thing about the present is that you can't measure it the way you can measure the past or plan the future. That's what makes it so vital. It is the only real time there is. Think of the time you've wasted going over the past in your head, your memories and your regrets. or planning or fretting about the future, while all the while this minute is waiting patiently to be turned into thought, feeling and action.
I don't "believe in yesterday." I don't believe "life is what you do while your waiting to die." Scripture says "Now is the day of salvation." Whatever "salvation" means to you, it's right in front of you.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
****************************
Showing posts with label past. Show all posts
Showing posts with label past. Show all posts
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Friday, June 29, 2012
Your True Value
They are but beggars that can count their worth.
Shakespeare
****************
Hello Frosty
****************
As I add more years of experience to my calendar I come to realize more and more how unimportant my past is. It is preverbal that gray headed ones, particularly those with no grand children, tend to dwell with memories, in an atmosphere of a life lived almost as uif that life was over. There are regrets, of course, but there is also pride of accomplishment and, maybe, satisfaction. Well and good, up to a point. But just because the hair is gray doesn't have to mean that the head is.
Sometimes, in this journal, I may bring up some event from the past to illustrate a point, and I might remember an event in conversation with someone who shared it. But otherwise I don't want to think about the past. It's gone. It doesn't exist. It is not an extant in the world.
The best part is to realize that my past, my childhood, the loss of my father, poverty, scorn, abuse, itinerancy, the education I got, the failures, the successes, the tragedies, the delights, the accidents, the injuries, the pain, the fights, the sex, the loves, the fears, do not define who I am. Put them sll together in a biography and they don't even begin to summerize me.
Woven in and out though all those threads on the loom of time are the invisible, intangible, inestimable virtues and values that have always been there and have always been who I am. Most of the events of my past were cover ups, things I did while I was waiting to discover myself or things that happened to me which beclouded the discovery.
Even if you are a young person your worth is not measured by the events of your life, including your hopes and plans. True human value is above all the tangibles and materials. I discovered this truth by going back and looking at some of the entries in my private paper journal. I was amused and annoyed to discover, in light of my recent slowly growing realization of my real value, how inconsequential many of those entries are.
Think about it. How much of your current life will you count as worth and how much will you eventually discard as worthless? I used to be amused at the answer sometimes given to interviewers of older peopled that if they had it to live over again they wouldn't chance a thing. What amused me was the bland acknowledgement that seemed to imply life was over and the belief that if they thought about it there were probably a great many things they would change. Now, today, I think about it and ask myself if there was anything I would change. My first impulse is to say that I would probably change all of it. But then I think again and say that maybe I would not, in fact, change any of it except to acknowledge to myself that none of it was true.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
**************************
Shakespeare
****************
Hello Frosty
****************
As I add more years of experience to my calendar I come to realize more and more how unimportant my past is. It is preverbal that gray headed ones, particularly those with no grand children, tend to dwell with memories, in an atmosphere of a life lived almost as uif that life was over. There are regrets, of course, but there is also pride of accomplishment and, maybe, satisfaction. Well and good, up to a point. But just because the hair is gray doesn't have to mean that the head is.
Sometimes, in this journal, I may bring up some event from the past to illustrate a point, and I might remember an event in conversation with someone who shared it. But otherwise I don't want to think about the past. It's gone. It doesn't exist. It is not an extant in the world.
The best part is to realize that my past, my childhood, the loss of my father, poverty, scorn, abuse, itinerancy, the education I got, the failures, the successes, the tragedies, the delights, the accidents, the injuries, the pain, the fights, the sex, the loves, the fears, do not define who I am. Put them sll together in a biography and they don't even begin to summerize me.
Woven in and out though all those threads on the loom of time are the invisible, intangible, inestimable virtues and values that have always been there and have always been who I am. Most of the events of my past were cover ups, things I did while I was waiting to discover myself or things that happened to me which beclouded the discovery.
Even if you are a young person your worth is not measured by the events of your life, including your hopes and plans. True human value is above all the tangibles and materials. I discovered this truth by going back and looking at some of the entries in my private paper journal. I was amused and annoyed to discover, in light of my recent slowly growing realization of my real value, how inconsequential many of those entries are.
Think about it. How much of your current life will you count as worth and how much will you eventually discard as worthless? I used to be amused at the answer sometimes given to interviewers of older peopled that if they had it to live over again they wouldn't chance a thing. What amused me was the bland acknowledgement that seemed to imply life was over and the belief that if they thought about it there were probably a great many things they would change. Now, today, I think about it and ask myself if there was anything I would change. My first impulse is to say that I would probably change all of it. But then I think again and say that maybe I would not, in fact, change any of it except to acknowledge to myself that none of it was true.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
**************************
Saturday, May 12, 2012
What's on your mind?
The future is much like the present, only longer.
Dan Quisenberry
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Hello George
*************************
Measurements are good for designing clothes, building sheds and figuring how long it will take to drive to Aunt Martha's house. Measurements are very poor and often destructive things when it comes to life. Things take as long as they take. What difference does it make to look back and see how long it took for something to happen. The past isn't important anyway. It's over. It doesn't exist.
If the future is like today then it stands to reason if you want a certain future you should be living it as much as possible today and learning thereby how to live it more. We must make plans for the future, of course, but the best time to begin that improvement program is today, not tomorrow.
I once knew a fellow who at the age of about 30 calculated at what point in his life he would be coming down with certain diseases and infirmaries. He even tried to include me in his calculations as if it was the natural course of everyone's life. I didn't buy it. I saw him years later and it seems he had successfully programmed himself into a walking advertisement for disaster. He was a mess. And he was surprised to see me so sprightly and limber. We were the same age.
It's not a difficult thing to discipline thought. We do it all the time when we need to. It's when we don't seem to need to, when the mind is wandering, day dreaming or generally unoccupied in serious thought that the negatives might start to take over, the fears, worries and depressions. Those are the thoughts that don't belong to us. They come along with the breeze and stick to the fly paper of our minds. Then we have some cleaning up to do. Heaven forbid we should discipline our thoughts to measure how long it will be before we become sick and infirm, like the poor fellow I knew. Whereas if we keep a bright, warm beacon focused on the rights not the wrongs, the hopes not the fears, the desires not the doubts, we eventually bring those realities from today into the future, as we bring the future into today. And it doesn't matter how long it takes.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
***************************
Dan Quisenberry
*************************
Hello George
*************************
Measurements are good for designing clothes, building sheds and figuring how long it will take to drive to Aunt Martha's house. Measurements are very poor and often destructive things when it comes to life. Things take as long as they take. What difference does it make to look back and see how long it took for something to happen. The past isn't important anyway. It's over. It doesn't exist.
If the future is like today then it stands to reason if you want a certain future you should be living it as much as possible today and learning thereby how to live it more. We must make plans for the future, of course, but the best time to begin that improvement program is today, not tomorrow.
I once knew a fellow who at the age of about 30 calculated at what point in his life he would be coming down with certain diseases and infirmaries. He even tried to include me in his calculations as if it was the natural course of everyone's life. I didn't buy it. I saw him years later and it seems he had successfully programmed himself into a walking advertisement for disaster. He was a mess. And he was surprised to see me so sprightly and limber. We were the same age.
It's not a difficult thing to discipline thought. We do it all the time when we need to. It's when we don't seem to need to, when the mind is wandering, day dreaming or generally unoccupied in serious thought that the negatives might start to take over, the fears, worries and depressions. Those are the thoughts that don't belong to us. They come along with the breeze and stick to the fly paper of our minds. Then we have some cleaning up to do. Heaven forbid we should discipline our thoughts to measure how long it will be before we become sick and infirm, like the poor fellow I knew. Whereas if we keep a bright, warm beacon focused on the rights not the wrongs, the hopes not the fears, the desires not the doubts, we eventually bring those realities from today into the future, as we bring the future into today. And it doesn't matter how long it takes.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
***************************
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
It's Time Again
Your past may be silently holding your future hostage.
Unknown
*****************
Hello Sandy
*****************
I've been thinking and writing lately about the subject of time. Time, like the concepts of up and down, left and right is a strictly human measurement based on a limited sense of existence. In most of the universe there are no lefts and rights, up and downs. And when we talk about stars we talk about how many light years they are away from us, the distance light can travel in one year. And considering the speed of light, those distances are not only inconceivable to most people but it also means that the event we are seeing happened a long time ago. And there's that issue of time again.
What we are viewing is a stars past. Based on accumulated knowledge, an astronomer may be able to predict that stars future. But in fact he will only be predicting it's present, or its recent past. We won't know its future because we don't know its present.
Now what does that say about your life? When you look at it are you looking at your past because the present hasn't caught up with you yet and are you trying to predict your future from that past.? The past is a period of time, light years away from the now. It is useless information for predicting the future. It is best discarded or tucked away for safe keeping and ignored. It may have shaped you into what you are today, but it is a poor measurement for who you will become. That will happen because of who you are and what you do today. It's OK to have happy memories of the past as long as they are kept in their places, gathering dust. Who you are is who you are today and what you think of yourself today and what you think of yourself days, months and light years from now.
There is no time. We live at an instant. We always have and we always will.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
***************************
Unknown
*****************
Hello Sandy
*****************
I've been thinking and writing lately about the subject of time. Time, like the concepts of up and down, left and right is a strictly human measurement based on a limited sense of existence. In most of the universe there are no lefts and rights, up and downs. And when we talk about stars we talk about how many light years they are away from us, the distance light can travel in one year. And considering the speed of light, those distances are not only inconceivable to most people but it also means that the event we are seeing happened a long time ago. And there's that issue of time again.
What we are viewing is a stars past. Based on accumulated knowledge, an astronomer may be able to predict that stars future. But in fact he will only be predicting it's present, or its recent past. We won't know its future because we don't know its present.
Now what does that say about your life? When you look at it are you looking at your past because the present hasn't caught up with you yet and are you trying to predict your future from that past.? The past is a period of time, light years away from the now. It is useless information for predicting the future. It is best discarded or tucked away for safe keeping and ignored. It may have shaped you into what you are today, but it is a poor measurement for who you will become. That will happen because of who you are and what you do today. It's OK to have happy memories of the past as long as they are kept in their places, gathering dust. Who you are is who you are today and what you think of yourself today and what you think of yourself days, months and light years from now.
There is no time. We live at an instant. We always have and we always will.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
***************************
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Stop The Clock
When a thing is done, it's done. Don't look back. .Look forward to your next objective.
General George Marshall
*****************************
Hello Arlene
*****************************
I've been thinking about the subject of time. Time, one of the nastiest apples ever plucked from the tree of good and evil. I'm not sure if I have time to write about it this evening, It will take some time and even though I have time on my hands, it may be time to do something else. But since it's a timely subject I'll take the time to address it.
I'm beginning to believe as many forward thinking and prophetic philosophers and scientists have said, time doesn't really exist. There is no time. Time hasn't run out. It was never there in the first place.
"Stand still ,you ever-moving spheres of heaven,
That time may cease, and midnight never come."
(Christopher Marlowe)
We are tyrannized by our clocks and calendars. While time is really only a human measurement of how long it takes something to move. we shape our lives around it. And the worst part of it, the most toxic part, is that we put events into a time slot of future, present and past. But I've come to realize that there is no past. The past is gone, so it doesn't exist and therefore it doesn't require my attention nor do the memories that cloud around it.
"Behind me the branches of a wasted and sterile existence are cracking."
(Gustav Mahler)
And so they should be though one could hardly call Mahler's life wasted and sterile. But what is cracking is gone and will do what all past does, fall back into it's essence and create the present, and the present will create the future. The future, like the past, doesn't exist and it never will because all there is is the present and the present doesn't exist in time.
"And the angel...lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware...that there should be time no longer."
(Revelation)
If Mahler's life was wasted and sterile than everyone's life was also. but only if we didn't take advantage of the now. We have always been and always will be in the present moment because there is no other. Now is the only time. "Now is the day of salvation."
(Corinthians II)
Well, I can see from the old clock on the wall that it's almost time to post this. Today is the only day. Do good things today and keep on doing them.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
*****************************
General George Marshall
*****************************
Hello Arlene
*****************************
I've been thinking about the subject of time. Time, one of the nastiest apples ever plucked from the tree of good and evil. I'm not sure if I have time to write about it this evening, It will take some time and even though I have time on my hands, it may be time to do something else. But since it's a timely subject I'll take the time to address it.
I'm beginning to believe as many forward thinking and prophetic philosophers and scientists have said, time doesn't really exist. There is no time. Time hasn't run out. It was never there in the first place.
"Stand still ,you ever-moving spheres of heaven,
That time may cease, and midnight never come."
(Christopher Marlowe)
We are tyrannized by our clocks and calendars. While time is really only a human measurement of how long it takes something to move. we shape our lives around it. And the worst part of it, the most toxic part, is that we put events into a time slot of future, present and past. But I've come to realize that there is no past. The past is gone, so it doesn't exist and therefore it doesn't require my attention nor do the memories that cloud around it.
"Behind me the branches of a wasted and sterile existence are cracking."
(Gustav Mahler)
And so they should be though one could hardly call Mahler's life wasted and sterile. But what is cracking is gone and will do what all past does, fall back into it's essence and create the present, and the present will create the future. The future, like the past, doesn't exist and it never will because all there is is the present and the present doesn't exist in time.
"And the angel...lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware...that there should be time no longer."
(Revelation)
If Mahler's life was wasted and sterile than everyone's life was also. but only if we didn't take advantage of the now. We have always been and always will be in the present moment because there is no other. Now is the only time. "Now is the day of salvation."
(Corinthians II)
Well, I can see from the old clock on the wall that it's almost time to post this. Today is the only day. Do good things today and keep on doing them.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
*****************************
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