We are not our thoughts
Up with the chickens this morning, which means I got to bed on time last night with no distractions. I woke, meditated, and read the Sunday New York Times from a few weeks ago while I drank my one and only cup of decaf. It was dark outside. I then read a few pages out of The Power of Now. This stayed with me:
To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and future are considered important. This total reversal of the truth accounts for the fact that in the ego mode the mind is so dysfunctional. It is always concerned with keeping the past alive, because without it —–who are you? It constantly projects itself into the future to ensure its continued survival and to seek some kind of release or fulfilment there. It says: “One day when this, that, or other happens, I am going to be okay, happy, at peace.”
Even when the ego seems to be concerned with the present, it is not the present that it sees: It misperceives it completely because it looks at it through the eyes of the past. Or it reduces the present to a means to an end, an end that always lies in the mind-projected future. Observe your mind and you’ll see that this is how it works.
The present moment holds the key to liberation. But you cannot find the present moment as long as you are your mind.