Living Unbound

When you indentify with the events in your life, you begin to write a mental story. A story of you. But just for a moment, try this exercise with me…

Think back on your life. Not any specific event necessarily, but the life thusfar as a whole. You can remember certain things that happened, things you accomplished, tragic events and as a whole it is a story.

Is this story any more real that a novel you may have read? The characters in a book appear and once the book has been finished, so are the characters. They live only in your memory. They are not real.

Is there really any difference between your memories of characters in a novel and the characters and events in the memory of your life? They both only live on in memory. Neither really exists at this point in time. What you will remember as time goes on will fade and become less accurate and many events will disappear completely from your memory.

You, as a person in that story of your life, is gone. There were experiences and events, but where are you?

This is how most people identify themselves, yet there is no one there to identify. Every moment is new. Holding on to emotions from the past is like clinging to a ghost. It only lives in your thinking mind.

The actual true self was and is the observer, and the observer is not married to time. Life streams as it streams, and the true selve remains unaffected. If you are able to live, this moment without carrying the ghosts of the past, this is your ultimate freedom. The past is no more, the future isn’t any more real than the past. There is only now and now and now.

The ability to live now, accepting the current circumstances without holding on to them or making them part of your identity, and part of your story, is the path to living fully and to the eventual realization that your are both the author and the observer.

The good news is that living this is effortless. Just by being you are awareness itself. It requires so little of us that we completely miss it. The mind is always looking for “ways” to do things. Resting in your true self, you will quickly notice that you needn’t plan your responses to life. Your choices will constantly return you to your true and authentic self. No effort, no fear and the vanishing of the story.

In oneness and living in the now,

Paul