Astrall
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For the past ten years, I have had many problems. I have gone through a lot of turmoil. It seems my mind is in constant motion. What can I do about this?
Why think about the past ten years? Why? Here is the root cause of your problem.
What have you gained from the past? Only memories and thoughts. And you continue to collect and cherish these memories, and with each passing day, your past grows larger and larger. The burden of the past increases daily because you accumulate thoughts, memories, and experiences. Every day your mind becomes larger and larger, while your consciousness becomes smaller and smaller.
The mind consists of an accumulated past, and its baggage is constantly increasing. What else can the mind do besides repeat thoughts? What is thinking if not chewing over the past again and again? Nothing new penetrates it.
Thinking is never original; it cannot be original because one can only think in terms of the known. You cannot think about the unknown; the unknown can only be reached through the experience of living.
Every day brings the mind new material for reflection. And the mind continues to think: it is a very efficient mechanism. It can even think so quickly that you will not have time to link thoughts together and will reach the point of madness. A madman is someone whose thinking has become pathological: his thoughts overlap one another. You think linearly, whereas a madman thinks in many directions simultaneously; his thinking is very complex.
If you continue to accumulate the past, your mind will expand more and more. You might even completely lose self-awareness, and then you will become an automaton, a computer, a thinking machine, a robot.
You ask what should be done? Let the past be the past. Do not carry it with you.
Forget it. Devote your entire being to the current moment. And surprisingly, if you are truly only in the current moment, you cannot think; it is impossible. Thinking is possible only in the past or in the future, but not in the present. Stay here and now. Do not retreat into the past and do not run ahead into the future. Remain in the moment that is happening right now.
For example, I was just speaking. I think you did not hear what I was saying because your question was likely still spinning in your mind. You missed it. And you may miss the current moment again. If you are truly listening to me, your thinking process must stop. If the thinking process continues, you cannot listen to me. If you are thinking about what I am saying, figuring out how to practice it, you are once again missing the present moment.
When you eat, eat — and do nothing else. When you listen, listen — and do nothing else. When you walk, walk — and do nothing else. Remain in the present moment, stay with the action, and soon you will realize that the past has receded, and a new space has opened within you. In this space, there are no thoughts.
Live from moment to moment. Die to the past and die to the future. Live here and now, so that everything you do becomes meditation.
Meditation is a state, not an action, so any action can become meditative. The so-called meditation that many stubbornly continue to practice is not meditation. The primary, central, essential point of meditation is precisely total presence in the present.
Do what you usually do: walk down the street, run, take a bath, eat, fall asleep, lie in bed, relax — and be fully focused only on that action. Without past, without future, remain in the present. At first, it will be hard, very hard, very difficult, but soon you will taste the present, and then a new door, a new sphere will open. Then the endless work of the mind will stop.
I do not mean to say that you will be unable to think; on the contrary, only then will you gain the ability to truly think. Thinking is different from frantic mental bustle. The crowd of your thoughts is not thinking at all. Thoughts flow and flow, and you can do nothing about them. You are simply a victim, not a thinker; you suffer rather than reflect.
Try to stop any single thought, and you will realize who the master is. Try to stop it. You cannot. The thought will rebel against your control and return for revenge — with even greater force, greater agility and activity. Whatever you think about is not actually thinking; it is just bustle, frantic bustle, a crowd, a traffic jam of thoughts — an incongruous, useless, unnecessary relic of the past.
So be aware. Do not lose the present. Live in the present. Know the meditative quality of the present.
In fact, the present moment has nothing to do with time. The past is time, the future is time, but the present is not time. Usually, we divide time into three parts: past, present, and future. But in reality, it is not so.
The present is eternal; the present exists. It is always here and now, an eternal now. In reality, there is no past and no future. The past lives only in memory, and the future only in imagination. The past and future belong to the mind, but not to existence. If you can understand this, you will see that time is the mind, and the mind is time. Stop the mind, and time will disappear. And vice versa.
This is why all religions claim that in the inner space there is no time, that a deep dive into the inner dimension is a timeless moment. This timelessness is here, in this very instant. You may miss it due to the bad habit of accumulating the past, but it is here, and if you begin to realize it, it can continue.
The moment you are aware, the past steps aside, the future dissolves, and the present moment comes alive. Live in it, exist in it, and then the frantic bustle of thoughts will cease. Then for the first time, you will gain the ability to think. This new thinking means greater awareness, a more concentrated consciousness, a more focused light of your being. You become so aware that as soon as any problem arises before you, your consciousness, the focused light of your being, resolves it. And when the problem is resolved, you know the answer.
Your so-called thinking is more akin to anxiety than to thinking. Current thinking forces you to search for an answer by touch, and this search happens in the dark. Today you think you have solved something, but tomorrow the same problem arises again, everything becomes tangled once more, and you continue your search in the dark. This is why thinkers change their opinions every day. What was truth yesterday is no longer truth today, and what is truth today will not be truth tomorrow. So everything is relatively true: nothing is true, nothing is false; the true and the false can switch places at any moment.
The truth of Buddha has a completely different quality... it exists outside of time. The truth of Jesus exists outside of time. Their truth cannot become a lie because it was found not through thinking, but through meditation; not through continuous listening to thoughts, but in a deep journey inward without any thoughts. Remember: when you are in the present, there are no thoughts."
Osho
Why think about the past ten years? Why? Here is the root cause of your problem.
What have you gained from the past? Only memories and thoughts. And you continue to collect and cherish these memories, and with each passing day, your past grows larger and larger. The burden of the past increases daily because you accumulate thoughts, memories, and experiences. Every day your mind becomes larger and larger, while your consciousness becomes smaller and smaller.
The mind consists of an accumulated past, and its baggage is constantly increasing. What else can the mind do besides repeat thoughts? What is thinking if not chewing over the past again and again? Nothing new penetrates it.
Thinking is never original; it cannot be original because one can only think in terms of the known. You cannot think about the unknown; the unknown can only be reached through the experience of living.
Every day brings the mind new material for reflection. And the mind continues to think: it is a very efficient mechanism. It can even think so quickly that you will not have time to link thoughts together and will reach the point of madness. A madman is someone whose thinking has become pathological: his thoughts overlap one another. You think linearly, whereas a madman thinks in many directions simultaneously; his thinking is very complex.
If you continue to accumulate the past, your mind will expand more and more. You might even completely lose self-awareness, and then you will become an automaton, a computer, a thinking machine, a robot.
You ask what should be done? Let the past be the past. Do not carry it with you.
Forget it. Devote your entire being to the current moment. And surprisingly, if you are truly only in the current moment, you cannot think; it is impossible. Thinking is possible only in the past or in the future, but not in the present. Stay here and now. Do not retreat into the past and do not run ahead into the future. Remain in the moment that is happening right now.
For example, I was just speaking. I think you did not hear what I was saying because your question was likely still spinning in your mind. You missed it. And you may miss the current moment again. If you are truly listening to me, your thinking process must stop. If the thinking process continues, you cannot listen to me. If you are thinking about what I am saying, figuring out how to practice it, you are once again missing the present moment.
When you eat, eat — and do nothing else. When you listen, listen — and do nothing else. When you walk, walk — and do nothing else. Remain in the present moment, stay with the action, and soon you will realize that the past has receded, and a new space has opened within you. In this space, there are no thoughts.
Live from moment to moment. Die to the past and die to the future. Live here and now, so that everything you do becomes meditation.
Meditation is a state, not an action, so any action can become meditative. The so-called meditation that many stubbornly continue to practice is not meditation. The primary, central, essential point of meditation is precisely total presence in the present.
Do what you usually do: walk down the street, run, take a bath, eat, fall asleep, lie in bed, relax — and be fully focused only on that action. Without past, without future, remain in the present. At first, it will be hard, very hard, very difficult, but soon you will taste the present, and then a new door, a new sphere will open. Then the endless work of the mind will stop.
I do not mean to say that you will be unable to think; on the contrary, only then will you gain the ability to truly think. Thinking is different from frantic mental bustle. The crowd of your thoughts is not thinking at all. Thoughts flow and flow, and you can do nothing about them. You are simply a victim, not a thinker; you suffer rather than reflect.
Try to stop any single thought, and you will realize who the master is. Try to stop it. You cannot. The thought will rebel against your control and return for revenge — with even greater force, greater agility and activity. Whatever you think about is not actually thinking; it is just bustle, frantic bustle, a crowd, a traffic jam of thoughts — an incongruous, useless, unnecessary relic of the past.
So be aware. Do not lose the present. Live in the present. Know the meditative quality of the present.
In fact, the present moment has nothing to do with time. The past is time, the future is time, but the present is not time. Usually, we divide time into three parts: past, present, and future. But in reality, it is not so.
The present is eternal; the present exists. It is always here and now, an eternal now. In reality, there is no past and no future. The past lives only in memory, and the future only in imagination. The past and future belong to the mind, but not to existence. If you can understand this, you will see that time is the mind, and the mind is time. Stop the mind, and time will disappear. And vice versa.
This is why all religions claim that in the inner space there is no time, that a deep dive into the inner dimension is a timeless moment. This timelessness is here, in this very instant. You may miss it due to the bad habit of accumulating the past, but it is here, and if you begin to realize it, it can continue.
The moment you are aware, the past steps aside, the future dissolves, and the present moment comes alive. Live in it, exist in it, and then the frantic bustle of thoughts will cease. Then for the first time, you will gain the ability to think. This new thinking means greater awareness, a more concentrated consciousness, a more focused light of your being. You become so aware that as soon as any problem arises before you, your consciousness, the focused light of your being, resolves it. And when the problem is resolved, you know the answer.
Your so-called thinking is more akin to anxiety than to thinking. Current thinking forces you to search for an answer by touch, and this search happens in the dark. Today you think you have solved something, but tomorrow the same problem arises again, everything becomes tangled once more, and you continue your search in the dark. This is why thinkers change their opinions every day. What was truth yesterday is no longer truth today, and what is truth today will not be truth tomorrow. So everything is relatively true: nothing is true, nothing is false; the true and the false can switch places at any moment.
The truth of Buddha has a completely different quality... it exists outside of time. The truth of Jesus exists outside of time. Their truth cannot become a lie because it was found not through thinking, but through meditation; not through continuous listening to thoughts, but in a deep journey inward without any thoughts. Remember: when you are in the present, there are no thoughts."
Osho