Wow, here we are in the middle of now. Everything that has come before is history and everything that’s to come is next.
It’s like we’re standing still on an escalator or one of those moving walkways like they have in airports. Our past is a long string of episodes strung out behind us, our future is slowly coming into view and we are standing still in now.
In another sense the future doesn’t really exist at all because it hasn’t happened yet and the past obviously doesn’t exist because it already happened. Atleast that’s what our memories tell us. Maybe it didn’t happen that way at all. Memories are like photographs made with one of those polaroid cameras. You press the button and a photograph comes out but it yellows and fades with time.
I’ve been thinking about that, the vagaries of memory and what is real. ‘Keep it real’ people sometimes say, which means be authentic. Right? As if we are fake most of the time. But how can you not be real, really? Even if you are acting fake you are still doing it in your own authentic way.
Anyways, it seems to me that now is real, everything else is a construct in our minds, a simulation. And infact now is in our minds too. Right? That’s where we experience everything. Wrong. There is a reality that we feel too. It can’t be challenged because that’s what we feel. Who else knows (or cares) what it is? Well maybe they care but they can’t know. It’s a personal and private knowing. Different from memory and different from projections about the future.
That’s where little kids live. I think the reason why we can’t remember being an infant is because we didn’t have a memory function back then, not a developed long term memory function. We didn’t need it. We didn’t know what anything was anyway, it was all new information. I mean we were gathering and collating and indexing but the experience, the feeling is what mattered. Not alot of logic yet either.
Therefore, to my point: reality only exists in the moment and can only be felt. Everything else is noise. Elaborate noise, interesting noise, useful noise even but not real.
Why is it then that we only seem to talk about the world of noise? Everything that’s important is in the world of noise. I’m exaggerating of course to make a point but it’s true. We hardly ever stop and take note of what we feel and give it the importance it deserves. I’m not talking about emotions either. I’m talking about the simple direct perceptions that a child might have. Become like a little child to enter the Kingdom of Heaven and all that.
I’m not religious but I figure neither was Jesus. He was someone who tried to welcome people to the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’. Atleast that’s how it’s translated. Who knows how he actually said it. Probably in some elegant simple way that startled people with it’s obviousness. The birds of the field want not and all that. Obvious.
It’s in every holy book. Otherwise it wouldn’t be holy. How to come into the knowledge of now, where reality is, where the Kingdom of Heaven is, where the obvious is seen and acknowledged. That’s what it’s about or no one would revere it.
So that’s my sermon for today. My dad was a preacher. Baptist. He would hold forth every Sunday morning for the benefit of the assembled congregation and I would sit there in the third pew between my mother and my little brother and fidget and try to focus and try to understand something. I don’t remember any of the words but I remember the service. Something must of stuck.
Of course later in life I discovered many different forms of communion. Many different fonts of wisdom sprang forth from many different sources. If they had the perfume of truth I inhaled. That’s the best way I can put it. Truth does have a perfume. It’s intoxicating. You can feel it.
Now on to politics. No, just kidding. Ha ha. Talk about noise. Folks, the whole earth will disappear someday. No kidding.
Human civilization as we know it will change into something we can’t imagine. I mean do you think the cavemen from 50,000 years ago could imagine our lifestyle? Cars and airplanes and spaceships? Submarines and such. No. To answer my own question. Even the wise ones, the shamans. That’s what life on earth will turn into - something we can’t imagine.
The only thing that will remain is what has always been here. Truth. The real deal and the ability to experience it. That’s what I think.
Amen and pass the collection plate, or atleast sign on, comment, share or buy me a coffee. I’m working hard and hoping for a break. I’m trying to keep it real.
music :: Billy Esteban - Ethno Deep House 2023 from 7:22
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