How many times have you gotten wrapped up in fantasy land? Creating a whole script in your head about how something is going to turn out, making assumptions about how someone feels about you, or fantasizing about how something could be. You find that you enjoy living in fantasy, because it seems more exciting than living in the world that you call your reality, it is an escape; a place to hide from yourself.
The tricky mind can be a trap though, and if you follow the mind’s elaborate stories you will eventually find yourself in a world of illusion and confusion, believing the stories that you have made up to be true. Once under the mind’s control, you will find yourself doing things you would have never done, or making decisions that leave you baffled afterwards, and really disappointed after you realize it was not as good as you had dreamt it would be. You may even make decisions you regret for the rest of your life. In a way you are delusional, you are sleeping while awake.
Sometimes we spend years in this delusional state, and once we begin to wake up we find ourselves wondering where we had been all those years and we don’t even know who we are anymore. We look around to see our family, our children or our spouses and we find ourselves a million miles apart, living together, but in separate worlds.
How do you break free from this illusion and escape this fantasy world? How can we find ourselves again? By practicing presence…by being here now, not fantasizing, thinking about the past or the future; being here now is the only reality, it is the only truth, everything else is an illusion. If we can truly be in this moment, we can be free. We can detach and observe our lives, watching the mind, watching ourselves and our reactions, yet not getting swept away by any emotion, allowing each emotion to rise and fall. Always remembering that the only truth is this present moment, nothing else exists.
So go on and sink into this moment, watch your beautiful babies dancing around, really listen to their laughter and truly see the life and spark that shines so brightly in their eyes, watch the rays of the sun peek through the leaves of the trees as they dance in the wind, or feel the ocean ebb and flow. Dissolve into this moment, this is all we have.
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