The mind is a thing of such beauty. If you treat it well, and fill it with love, then you will encounter love and beauty wherever you go in this world. If, on the other hand, you clutter it with worry and anxiety, then you create for yourself only suffering.
We have so much power in our lives to change things and make things better. Even when we fall on hard times, when we are experiencing the darkest of midnights, life will offer us opportunities to turn things around.
This is not to say that life is always wonderful, because it is not. There are many painful things in life. Everyone’s experiences in this world are colored with trauma in some form or another. But pain is a momentary thing. It is not pain that produces suffering; rather, it is our inability to deal with this pain, to confront this pain, to challenge this pain and overcome this pain that leads to suffering.
Our minds are capable of so much more. Our minds are capable of creativity, and compassion, and the ability to perceive beauty. Our minds can cultivate love, and see life through the lens of love. No matter the circumstances, no matter where you find yourself, you have the ability to be happy, and to set yourself down the path of finding even greater happiness.
We must learn to observe ourselves. Observation allows us to confront our unhealthy behaviors, the patterns and practices that produce suffering in our lives. We should see ourselves in the third person and really examine our thoughts, behaviors, and ingrained habits that have become so routine and rote that we no longer pay them any attention. These are the things that keep us chained to our suffering. If we are to lose these chains, then we must become aware of their existence.
We observe through meditation. Meditation means to quiet the mind — that’s all. You don’t have to put on saffron robes and shave your head to meditate. You can just sit, and take 10 deep breaths, and relax, and look at your thoughts without judgment. It is hard to do at first, because we are always judging our thoughts, always seeking to label them and put a value on them. But it is much better to just examine your thoughts without any sense of good or bad, right and wrong; just to see what your mind is producing of its own accord.
Then we ask why. Why am I so worried? Why does something bother me so? Why do I fret and fuss about something? When we meditate, we realize how silly our worries are. They are silly because they are based in fear, and fear is never based in reality.
When you sit, and quiet your mind, you will find yourself in the precious moment of the present. In the present, all things are possible. There is nothing in this world that is set in stone, nothing that is predestined or fated to happen. On the contrary, when we act in the present, we write fate in accordance with our will. We become the masters of our lives.
But the present is always overlooked. It is clouded by fear — fear of the past, or fear of the future. We are afraid of the past, because we feel we have committed an error; or we are afraid of the future because we fear a certain outcome. In either case, we are worried about things we cannot change, or things we have no control over. It is this idle worry and speculation that suffocates the potential for action, now, in this moment.
When you sit, and quiet your mind, and find yourself in the present, you will never experience worry or have fear, because you are tuned in to the very center of creative action. You have the power of God with you, because you can change your life in any shape or form. You are neither concerned with the mistakes of the past or the pitfalls of the future. You simply act. This is the state of nirvana, of true enlightenment, because it is a state without suffering — only conscious choice.
We must learn to live our lives with love in our hearts. Love grounds us in the present moment because it destroys fear. You can act out of love, or you can act out of fear. But you cannot act out of both. When you give yourself love, and comfort yourself as a parent would a worried child, then you will find yourself in the present, where all things are possible.
God is love. When you are grounded in love, you will know God. You will see that God is not a bearded man in the clouds, or a thing of vengeance or hatred. Love is encompassing, and God is encompassing. Love is energy, and God is energy. Love is the essence of the human consciousness, and God is the essence of human consciousness.
If you wanted, you could personalize love, you could make an idol and slap a label on it and call it love, and burn incense before it, or build a church around it. You could demand that people in other places worship your idol of love. You could kill them if they did not want to worship your idol. You could do that if you wanted, but it would be a tremendous waste of human energy, isn’t that right? A sad endeavor. This is what people have done with God. It is the same waste.
Today, we live in an age of great consequence. Millennia from now, humans will look on this century as a defining moment for the species. Today, there are wars, and rumors of wars, as well as tremendous changes affecting the environment. The ice caps are melting. The light of freedom dims as nation eyes nation with suspicion. Fear clouds the judgment of even the most well meaning of leaders.
In this context, one can either be afraid, or realize that such fear is meaningless. The first leads only to suffering; the second leads to liberation. Perhaps, in other times, it may have been possible to avoid a confrontation with fear, and to live our lives chained to the wheel of suffering, however unintentionally. But the suffering of today is sharp and its needles affect the soul in deep and powerful ways. Fear can no longer be the answer.
It is a life well lived to teach our children the danger of fear and the causes of suffering. It is enough to teach our children happier ways of life than the ways instilled in us by our parents, and to remind our children to do the same for their own progeny. For we are no less well intentioned than those who raised us. It is enough to merely ask that each generation improve upon the last. It is enough to do this.
