"What is best? and Why? What makes that the truth?" But I took those thoughts a step further, and rather than simply asking another for the answers, I did the work and kept trying to find the answers through my own experience.
They say you gotta live in the present moment. People implore each other by the masses. There are movements and groups dedicated to present mindedness, so much so, that being around can make you feel like they think it's some sort of sickness to consider anything outside of the current moment.
"You mustn't do that!!!"
I once spoke to a girl in her mid-twenties who was running her own Yoga studio. She had come to me with some inner problems she was having due to a catastrophic relationship failure that took her from total bliss to complete confusion and despair. The more I spoke to her the more clear it became that she was engaging in this Yoga discipline as a way to run away from the pain and fear that was overwhelming her. On a very real level she was in this aspect, a blind person leading the blind. I've seen this a few times in my life and it's pretty much the same template every time.
To cut through the bullshit, here is what's really happening. People aren't trying to be present minded at all. It's not about living life to the fullest, because if it were, that fullness would include the discomfort and negativity as well.
The real goal these people have, is to get rid of the pain of life, and they refuse to look at the fact that not only must it exist, they must go through it, and they will go through it, no matter what. The balance of life demands it. What they really want then out of a "full life", is a life as full of as much bliss and happiness as they can extract.
A year and a half ago, when I set out to save all this money to trade, and I worked so diligently and spent so little on things I didn't absolutely need... I was commended several times, being told that I was "working so hard".
I would tell people, "I'm only working so hard because I'm lazy". They didn't seem to understand, but it's the same tactic that the Yoga practitioners employ and the whole present-mindedness movement: People working real hard now, so to avoid the pain later. And there is some wisdom in that...
Problem is, they don't realize that's what they are doing.
A part of them want's relief from the reality of life so desperately, they actually believe that their practice is going to rid them of the misery for good. And that hope is turned into belief, because the smiling faces of everyone in the group, and the confident words of the leader become their proof... But those are often fronts and lies, because the people participating feel empty and are ashamed to show the true state in which they are in. They believe that they should be happy and filled with joy, so they must portray it to others. And if there's one thing I've observed in this life, it's that people who want to believe, will believe themselves to total destruction if that's what it takes. I've seen it in others, and myself.
The laziness thing... It's sort of a paradox because one could say I'm not lazy because I'm doing the work first instead of later... and there is a validity to that I suppose. Thing is, life, and our values, are up to us to determine. We'll... we have that option, but few seem to take the time to replace force-fed values with their own personal, genuine values. Especially when it comes to clichés, and that's why I like looking at them critically. They are things most of us are familiar with, so it may be easier to understand the discussion of them.
According to my own personal values, which I've spent many, many years of my life arriving at, I'd rather be actively lazy than passively lazy (most of the time). I wanna work hard now, because I want the option of being really lazy later if I choose to be. Is it lazier to be lazy now and do the work later? That's entirely up to you, and I think letting anyone make your mind for you about these things is potentially harmful. But since we're really talking about avoiding pain here...
The fact is, we must face our humanity at one point or another. In my experience, delaying that tends to make the inevitable confrontation more difficult than it would initially have been. But it's usually easier said than done and I am no exception.
Let's look at the zealous resistance of thoughts and living outside the present moment... In other posts I've expressed that we seem to naturally polarize every detail of our existence that we can, and I think this is no exception. It's been made black or white.
Lets very simply look at the statement "Live in the present moment".
Why?
"To live life with maximum lifeness of course! With maximum ...rightness... ??? I dunno, because someone said so?" (That's me mocking the true believer ;)
Just who is it that determined that living 100% present-minded is the absolute best thing you could do and should do? To be blunt, I don't care. I suppose another way of life: Balance and conscious choice.
[Reminder] It's rather easy for someone like me to sound contradictory in my expressions, as I am neither for nor against absolutes, but expressing my personal values can paint a different picture if one forgets that I know I am only expressing my opinion... [Onto the Opinion] I find it a bit ridiculous for a human to blindly accept assigned values for which they base all actions of their life upon, without examining them, yet, I consciously do some of those things myself. Yes, I consciously, blindly accept values, haha! I guess what matters in my book, is that I know I am making the sacrifice in critical thinking for certain things because the outcomes don't hold significant importance to me on those items. I think we all do this, but most only do this.
Who is going to be President? What is happening in the middle east? What is Oil going to do? I've consciously chosen that I don't care about those outcomes, and so I'm willing to let information into my brain and let it sit there and possibly form an opinion for me, because that opinion doesn't hold much sway in the experience of my day to day life. (Yes I can hear it now, about the President thing...)
To get back on track, what does thinking about the future hurt? Fanatics will tell you it hurts your ability to live in the moment where real life and fulfillment is. I think that's horse shit. If your desire is to be happy and fulfilled, and thinking about an event in the future or past brings you that, then who's to say you're not living your life correctly or to the fullest? I get it though, half of the problem is worrying about shit that happened, or hasn't happened yet. Well here's the thing purists, we live in the real world where regret and anxiety can help us learn things and make us "Better" humans. It's really all about balance. But you probably won't know what balance is, until you decide what you really want. That's one of the key steps man...
I imagine that the present minded movement was started by genuinely aware and intelligent beings, and like all other movements, got corrupted by people who don't understand things the way they were meant to be understood. It comes right back to "Principles vs Rules". The principle was probably "Be present minded so you're not worrying about things that you have no power to control or change" and the rule has become "You must be present minded all the time!". There's a huge difference between the two, and I think people who regurgitate present mindedness now usually have no idea what the point of it is.
And I'd like to reiterate: Don't let the point be determined for you. If I feel like shit and I know I need a distraction from the present moment, I have no problems thinking about the past or future if that's what is going to help shift me into the state I'd rather be in. There is a balance that can be had of necessity in the negative, which is entirely different than drowning in it, or attempting to avoid it outright. But you gotta know where you want to be, and totally avoiding the negative isn't going to help you.
In the end you could look at any way of being, as a crutch. My active laziness is an attempt to avoid a certain pain. Passive laziness the same. Hell, you could even say that to strive for balance is the avoidance of pain as well, and I would have to agree with you. But in the end if it truly is unavoidable, perhaps it's best for longevity's sake to learn how to accept it and live with it. The total avoidance of it is actually the spiritual equivalent of the Chinese finger trap. And the people professing a life without it are the salesmen, trapped in it themselves. Their fulfillment comes from the money they make off of selling it, and the smiling, lying faces they force themselves to believe are genuinely happy.
But no matter how much I say, the likelihood is that we will always have that crazy mechanism that just ceaselessly, obsessively seeks out happiness. I think a large part of that is the brains addiction to the chemicals released when we experience pleasure. We are literally, chemically addicted to pleasure, and in this age of instant gratification being the way of life, it is only natural to seek it out.
What seems unnatural these days, is to understand ourselves, and seek out the mechanisms that drive how and why we interact with our existence the way we do.
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