Here and now...

The present is where we are, where life takes place. Here and Now is where we create our world, you from your side, and me, from mine. Yesterday, the demented master points, is gone. Tomorrow, Tomorrow, well, that one never comes. It is always now and here.

In Hermann Hesse's novel, Siddhartha, a gray-haired character wisely explains how like the river we should always be in the present. The river is everywhere, at its source, at the ocean, on the mountain and the valley, in its beginning and in its end. The river is always present in its entirety.

Like the river, we are born, grow, experience, feel, change, physically, mentally, emotionally, withering along the way, until one day, it is time to depart. Like the river we have a beginning and end. We go through highs and lows. We are all of that at once, but our relation with time makes it seem otherwise. Our senses introduce us to shades of what is, giving us a limited perception of our realities, a glimpse of the iceberg. We see ourselves as water molecules, disconnected from the whole, helplessly caught in something frighteningly large and uncontrollable.

Yet, and here is our dilemma, we suspect, feel that there is more, that we ought to be more than the droplet, more than what we see, hear, feel, more than the senses. We suspect that we are the river, but as a thought it is too big to manage, too big to swallow. So we live in doubt, torn between our limited perceptions and the physically impossible richness of our potentiality. We are disappointed by what we were yesterday, fearful of remaining as we are when tomorrow comes, unable to see, hear, feel, know, experience our Truth.

Our vision is too narrow. Our yesterdays are a burdensome load, a false treasure, a casket of shame, too heavy to carry; yet we refuse to let go. Tomorrow, is an imaginary friend we've learned to rely on. Tomorrow is a black hole of doubts, fears, hopes, desires and wishes that have gone unchecked. It is what we feed it. Our present is what we do to satisfy both past and present. It's rarely about us... that is until we awaken, until we choose to awaken. And even then, there is a chance of relapse, for every now and here is a new beginning, where again and again, we can choose to either be awake, or to forget.

For days now, I've been contemplating this image. This morning, I felt like sharing... so, here you have it. By the way, there is also the movie, under the same title, Siddhartha.

Be well and remember to be like the river.

At times a drop, at times a river