Secrets of Mind and Reality

Yes, the way to save the world is to save yourself. The way to bring joy and peace into the world is to bring joy and peace into your heart. The way to alleviate pain and suffering in the world is to alleviate it in your heart. There’s no mystery there, and if that was the end-all and be-all of this article, you might stop reading here, figuring we weren’t really going to get around to what you hoped we were, what the title of this article led you to believe we were: how to improve the situations going on in the larger world. You want to know what you can do about war, crime, poverty, and injustice, right? So let’s get into it.

For starters, let’s spend a moment discussing what not to do, what you may be shocked to realize that you’ve already been doing all along. First, stop fighting. The War on Drugs, the War on Terrorism, the War on Poverty, the War on AIDS: all this War consciousness only attracts more war consciousness – more thirst for war, more justification for it, more things to fight against.

By perceiving the situation as one that must be fought against, you place yourself (and therefore the world) in a state of constant resistance. Your “fighting the good fight” only succeeds in creating more fight - more fighting and more things to fight against.

Secondly, stop dwelling on what’s wrong in the world. Global warming, racial intolerance, world hunger – all these things are part of our shared present reality. And being aware of them is different from being fixated on them. Being informed is okay; being inundated is not.

So are we advocating ignorance and inaction? Of course not! On the contrary, we’re advocating putting your attention where it can promote actual change for the better rather than perpetuating and reinforcing a prevailing problem. The best way to illustrate this shift is with a statement made by the beloved Mother Theresa who said she would never attend an anti-war rally, but would be happy to attend any peace rallies she was invited to.

Make your immediate world, starting from the inside, one of peace, tolerance, justice, abundance, etc. As your immediate reality starts shifting to accommodate your internal shift, it will start a chain-reaction, attracting more of that energy around you and, in so doing, expand that energy outward into more and more of the larger world.

If you take action in the name of any of these larger, humanitarian, environmental or other causes, take positive, proactive action to nurture, foster, and create more of the world you want to live. In a world like this, there’s no room for fighting, and the more you focus your consciousness on better things, the more the fighting inside and out will simply fall away.

The title of this article is a bit sneaky in that it contains, in the problem it poses to solve, its own answer. It’s in the last word: ‘Now’. That is how to be happy – Now: to access the power of the Now.

The Now is this moment and only this moment. Because Now it’s this one. And Now this one. That first ‘Now’ at the beginning of this paragraph and all subsequent ones since have already become the past. And the next time the big 3-letter ‘N’-word is mentioned here (you know the one we mean), it will be a future Now – there it is. Until Now.

Why all this silliness focused on the present moment? Because in truth, Now, or the present moment, is the only moment there ever really is. Why is understanding that so important to our happiness? Because all of our unhappiness, and every other negative thought and emotion associated with it, exists in the nonexistent past or future.

The present moment is timeless, eternal. And in it, if you are really in it, to be unhappy is impossible. Unfortunately, most of the time we think we’re in the present moment, we’re really in our heads, thinking about it, judging it, fretting about the past or worrying about the future. But in this inexorable moment Now, where the past is behind us and the future has yet to be, there is none of that (or at least there need not be).

There’s just the breeze, or lack thereof. The sun, or clouds. People and animals scurrying about, or lying still. Our thoughts and feelings on those circumstances are judgments, but happiness is not a judgment. It is an inward state of being, independent of circumstances, thoughts, feelings, and judgments.

Try for a moment, just being in the Now. It’s not so esoteric as it may seem. All it means is to still your constantly jabbering mind for a moment to let the still and silent observer deep inside you observe this moment.

Observe the breeze, or lack thereof. Observe the sun, or clouds. Observe the people and animals scurrying about or lying still. And especially observe those thoughts, feelings, and judgments about those things: about this exercise, even. And recognize that none of those thoughts and feelings and judgments are YOU. You are the still and silent observer watching and listening to it all. Try as hard as you can to experience that state for just a moment and then ask yourself if it was even possible for unhappiness to wheedle its way in there somehow.

The still and silent observer that is the real You is at peace, untroubled by errors of the past and hopes for the future. Circumstances don’t make us happy or unhappy. That’s why whenever we do manage to get what we thought we needed to be happy, we suddenly find something else to fix on, to hinge our continued happiness or unhappiness upon, something else that we must have or change in order to maintain this happiness and stave off future unhappiness.

Resistance to being fully present to the experience of this moment as it is and nothing but is what fosters unhappiness. Acceptance of this moment, embracing Now as it is, free of and untrammeled by the past and future, is where true and unshatterable happiness lies.

Feeling stuck? It’s such a common experience, we may be tempted to consider it normal. But it isn’t. In fact stagnancy, is anathema to the very nature of the Universe and All-That-Is.

Even people already acquainted with certain elements of this “You-Create-Your-Own-Reality” consciousness can find themselves paralyzed by the realization that their uncontrolled thoughts, complaints, and urges are the determinants of the shape of their lives yet to come.

It can be terribly frightening to realize that what you put your intention on is what will be. Who has the discipline to completely erase all negative thoughts, compulsions, etc. from their minds? None of us, as far as we know. So what are we to do? Are we doomed to play the victims to our uncontrolled fantasies and darkest nightmares?

Of course not. This isn’t a case of “You’ve made your bed. Now you must lie in it.” That is, unless you leave it that way. But you can change the sheets and pillowcases anytime you want. You can flip the mattress, you can move the bed around, you can throw out the darn thing and buy yourself a whole new one.

You may have heard it said somewhere before that the only thing that ever stays the same is that nothing ever stays the same. The only universal constant is change. The Universe is always in motion.

So if your experiences, the life that you lead and the life situations that you face, are all based on your thoughts, your expectations, and your beliefs, then the way to change your life situations, your experiences, the way to change your life, is to change your thoughts, expectations , and beliefs.

You are always free to change your mind, to replace a negative, undesirable thought with a positive, desirable one. Nothing is ever written in stone. Nothing.

If you’re climbing a ladder and suddenly you picture yourself falling, you’re not automatically doomed to fall. Not unless you continue to feed that anxiety. But saving yourself from such a fall is as simple as thinking a new thought. One that involves you confidently remaining safely on the ladder. And if your undisciplined mind keeps flitting back to pictures of you falling, you just keep replacing them in the next moment with pictures of you staying right where you are.

There are no jinxes except those that are left unshifted, no patterns or cycles or curses but those that are left unbroken. In every moment you have absolute freedom to harness the power of change, to think a new thought and, in doing so, reverse a whole lifetime of negativity.

So whether you feel like you’re stuck in a rut, under a jinx, trapped in a vicious pattern, or simply doomed to suffer an awful fate you’ve suddenly allowed to enter your undisciplined mind, just change it, and if it comes back, change it again (rinse and repeat) as often as needed. To change your life forever just change your mind, one thought, one moment at a time.