It’s the joy of the doing in this moment and not the outcome that matters.
When we give our energy and thought to the outcome then we enter the psychological time dimension of the future and all that brings is uncertainty as it is not real, it is just in our mind. So we suffer psychological fear which we can not deal with now. Present-moment fear we can deal with now, but fear of what might be is suffering.
When we just do, we actually enjoy it now, step by step, free from the fear of the outcome so we create our best. All of our energy and focus on the doing and, of course, each small step is a step nearer to the destination but without needing to keep looking at the map, we are just enjoying the road immediately in front of us.
Future is just a mental construct, but if we want to have a particular future, we can only have it now as when we get to any future moment, it will be still now. Now is the only time and when we stay away from the mind-made time dimensions of both past and future then we step away from suffering.
What we do now is the future we will have and if we do it now, it is not scary. The fear comes from thoughts of beyond now.
If we are present, then what we do is free from fear as we have not imagined an outcome that we can fear not achieving, all we experience is the pure joy of each tiny step. We create better when we are conscious.
We create very little of our truly amazing potential when we are consumed with thoughts of what might be.
Just be, just do and the future will take care of itself.
If we want to see changes in our life, then we have to take different actions, right?
If we keep doing the same things, then, of course, we always end up with the same results.
However, is it as simple as just changing what we do? Why if it was this simple, do we still struggle to change what we do?
As always, we have to go back to the roots of everything. It all starts at the core, not on the surface.
This is how it works…what we do or don’t do, is a direct result of our state of being. So if our state of being is one of fear or anxiety or worry etc, then the actions we take/don’t take will reflect that. Then the actions will lead to outcomes and those outcomes then feed back into our state of being. Thus we go round and round the same circle. We will never be able to change what we do unless we change our state of being.
Wow!! simple, right? Well…erm, no.
We have to work out what creates our state of being in order to be able to change it.
What creates our state of being?
Imagine yourself as a bus. The bus is our body, inside the bus is our soul, the only you, the true essence. In order to be in the state of being that will allow us to manifest truly who we are, we have to be the driver. We are the only one who is qualified to drive our bus. The true ‘you’ needs to be in the driving seat always. Then the bus goes on the path and journey that our soul/true essence (you) wants to take and experience. We will be able to do what we really want to do as we are consciously driving our bus.
However, what happens is there is someone else on the bus…shit! That’s right, there is a passenger, and that is our mind/ego/thoughts. The ego creates its own story and then wants to drive the bus and the real you ends up in the passenger seat suffering as the ego is a bad driver.
The other bad news, the ego stops and lets on other passengers either passengers that it has created or ones that others have created for us. These passengers then become our beliefs. The passengers, once created by us or the ones we let on the bus, never leave. They become our beliefs.
The ego, lets them drive too, so the suffering increases and our life, the bus journey, becomes hijacked and the journey doesn’t go as we intended or want. Beliefs create thoughts which lead to our actions, which in turn, create the outcomes in the exterior world.
So if we want to change our state of being, we have to identify the passengers, put them back into their seats and then take our position in the driving seat. Then the actions we take will be the ones that we want to take and the journey will unfold as we want it to. Once you have shone a torch on the passengers you know how they are, even the ones that hide right under the seats!
This means being at peace with all that is, accepting our beliefs are there, accept the journey to now. We have to accept that once we go into the psychological time dimension of the future, looking at the map, then the passengers get back into the driving seat.
Similarly, if we go back to the past, as in start looking in the rearview mirror, then we end up allowing the passengers to direct us, we are looking back and not staying focused on driving the bus. We are no longer focused on the road right in front of us and then we take wrong turns or crash.
The only moment we can drive the bus is now, it is the ONLY time. Now is our life and when we fall in love with this moment and stop denying it or seeing it as a means to an end, then we drive and not the passengers.
A good way to stay focused on the driving is to see each action we do as equal, do not place greater value on one thing versus another, then we are not always seeking the next ‘big’ thing and that stops us from reading the map all the time and worrying and thinking, it keeps the passengers from sneaking back into the driving seat as we are conscious and paying attention.
The other thing to note is when the passengers, directed by our ego, drive the bus, they do not pay any attention to the maintenance of the bus (our physical body). In fact, they damage the bus with their bad driving.
They also crash into other buses driven by their passengers and that creates bad relationships with other buses.
Drive your bus…it’s the only way to get to the destination you want in life.
Philip Dodson 