7. What We Never Forget
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We never forget many events in our life. Our first time at school, the first time we cycled, our achievements and may be the first million dollars.
These events are dated. They are based on the past or in the future. We are constantly going back into the past and checking if we had a better time then. Our memory always instills nostalgia. If we decide that we did not have a good time in the past, we are planning to have it in the future.
There is a chance, a small chance, although we live either in the past or in the future, we are truly not happy in either places! On the one hand we have the disgust or nostalgia for the past and on the other hand we have hopes and aspirations for the future. Both these positions are not satisfactory for us. In fact it begins to bother us.
For example. Let us say we have a headache. Our first reaction is to take a remedies to come out of it. Why do we do that? We take medicine or something to help us reduce the pain because pain is not our true state. Painlessness is our real nature.
Similarly, if we are worrying about the past or future all the time, why are we unhappy and dissatisfied with it? Because it is not our true nature. We attach ourselves to worry, we chase the same endless thoughts over and over again. When we associate ourselves with living in the present, we are expressing our true state.
Consider another example. If we have come from Hyderabad and lived in America for the past 30 years. As we have no practice we have forgotten how to speak Telugu. Suddenly if somebody starts speaking to us in Telugu, will we not remember? Don't we experience some joy in talking in our mother tongue.
In the same way, bliss and living in the present are the language of our being. It is a language that is more natural for us than our mother tongue or any language that we master. Bliss is our true state. Our dissatisfaction with the past and the fear of the future are all reminders that we need to live in the moment to experience bliss.
Up to the age of 7 we were in that state. Start reclaiming that forgotten language, that forgotten state. Meditation is the doorway to the process. Meditate everyday.