Continously living in our minds, the past the present , the future

I guess you could say that this Jedi is going a wee bit crazy, but then again, I don't really care if I am going crazy... really, I feel like this is the first time in my life that i am seeing things with some clarity. With that said,

It seems that most of us, including myself live in the past or the future constantly. The present , which is basically today, and right now ,seems to get lost in our hoping for or sometimes fearing for our place in the future, or this same present time is spent up thinking about the past and continously beating ourselves up about the past , why we are here, for what reason. What is baffling is we may never get to this reason for why things turned out the way they did , and we may never be sure of how things turn out in the future. So what are these notions of past and future in the present that is now? I think that the "past" we are thinking about is a construction of what "it maybe was" to us in a given moment of time, which does not even exist anymore. There is no way to verify whether it was that way or not, the notion of the past is a simple understanding of extinct moments in some way , such that this understanding maybe projected in our minds right "now". And the future , is a moment of possiblity that may exist , yet there is no certainity that it may turn out the way we want it to be, ofcourse ... there is also no certain basis for claiming that it will not turn out the way we want it to turn out. The point here, is that the moment does not even exist in the present, hence it is impossible to accurately predict that may happen in the future. Still, we worry and we live in these shells of the past and the future, without fully grasping the only thing that exists, which is just THIS. It is the present moment, the now, but the fickle mind keeps dwelling on things that do not really matter, in fact don't even exist.

 

If we became centered in our spiritual identities, everything would stop in its tracks...there would be nothing to gain in the future and no past losses to lament...and we don't want that to happen.

The mind, intelligence, and body are always seeking activity; to go towards that which is pleasant and avoid that which is unpleasant.

I had a moment of insight once, in which this all became very clear to me.

 

Maybe I misunderstand you, but isnt the question "why are we here?" and "for what reason?" a question of the present rather than the past? I guess I am lucky that I have always lived in the present for the majority of my life, even during the worst times in my life, when I was incarcerated, when I was homeless, etc, I was always able to at least see the sun and smile

 

Yes, it is quite hard to fight the mind, my only chance is in giving it up to God to handle it for me.

 

It's good that you were able to maintain this POV under such adverse conditions...there's a quote, I think from the era of Caitanya Mahaprabhu, in which Krishna says "Sometimes, when I want to be especially merciful to someone, I take all of his material posessions away...(and so on)".

Hopefully, though, you have resolved the reason for your incarceration and are no longer homeless.

Hare Krishna!

 

Well, the incarceration was over charges of reckless homicide, and I am currently out on bail. It is a major accident, filled with misunderstanding. But I am opitimistic that I will be let alone.
And thank you for the quote, this is so true. btw, I am no longer homeless, I live with my son in a nice little house that I rent in South Philly for very cheap! I am VERY thankful for this! Hare Krsna!!!!!!

 

We analize the past and prepare for the future because that comes with having a mind.
If we were animals we would only think of the moment, but God gave a very powerful mind that we cannot stop from thinking, so we need to steer it in positive directions hopefully into less hate-fllied ones, and more unselfish and love-driven ones.

There will always be people like Mother Teresa and others like the young Korean student; but what both of them have in common is that they are driven by a thinking mind that thinks and indulges in the past and projects into the future. Both of them put emotion into those thoughts, and both of them reap later the results of their thinking and the actions fueled by those thoughts.

We should not invest energy trying to stop the mind. Jesus once adivice his disciples with:

"Take no thought for tomorow, for tomorrow will take care of itself; suficient unto the day is the evil therof".

Probably he had mastered the mind not to even worry what we would eat, or where he would sleep, yet his mind was probably more busy than anyone else's in many other matters.

I like to keep busy and to keep my mind from worrying about anything, and I think that the two go together.

Remember:

"The idle mind is the devil's workshop"