Wow. I get it. This is great!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Or you could try finding the bliss IN your work. :smiley:

Remember when you first learned to add and working your way down a row of numbers was like figuring out a puzzle? Hey! Look! That accounts payable sheet is just like that! Whee!

Remember that time last month when you made your calls and that one woman was actually happy to hear from you and not only did you get your work done, but had a nice little side chat and learned that lemons grow on the tree in her backyard? Why don’t you try really being totally present for this next phone call and see if you can find out something neat about this caller and take care of him at the same time?

Remember when that anxious middle aged housewife came in to your store and you helped her find the absolute perfect outfit for her first job interview in 20 years? Man, she was so happy when she left! Try being totally devoted to the next customer who walks in and see if you can get her to smile before she leaves.

Isn’t it neat how keyboards “click” just the right amount when you type on them? Someone designed that! Someone sat there and pushed buttons and thought, “mmm…to hard…no, now it’s too mushy…” That was someone’s whole day once. Think about that the next time you’re typing up a report and feel some gratitude while you listen, look, and feel his creation in front of you.

I’m taking my daughter out today on her first outside tricycle ride (she’s been riding in the basement 'cause it’s been too cold out.) I’m going to be there. I’m going to try very hard not to worry about the time or when I need to start cooking dinner or how I did on my Chemistry midterm last week. I’ll show her how to pedal, I’ll ask her what she’s looking at, and if she wants to talk about squirrels for 20 minutes, by gum, I’ll talk about squirrels.

You can totally plan to be present. Being “in the moment” doesn’t mean you can’t plan for the future or learn from the past. It means that, in addition to spending time in the past and the future, you ALSO spend some time in the present. And, as a result, you become a more productive worker, a better parent and a more cheerful human being.
(Thoughts in this post are mine and mine only. IANABuddhist, nor have I studied Buddhism. I don’t think they have a copyright on “being present”, but I also don’t know if they’d agree with me that you can plan to be present. Works for me, YMMV.)

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You are absolutely right, of course. The problem is that I do an awful lot of multi-tasking, so I’m always all over the place. But writing code can be a total zen experience. If I can just shut off my e-mail notification, close the e-book I’m reading, and close the browser that’s showing the Straight Dope Mes…

Naw.

Have fun with your daughter. Learn something from her. Small kids are masters of this stuff.

63

There have been times in my life when I was totally in the now and it was really unpleasant. Really scary and really stressful.

There have been times in my life when I was totally in the now and it was really pleasant. Utterly happy and utterly relaxing.

I believe that it’s important to have those moments of being utterly in the now, but it’s not all fun and games. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with not always being in the now.

64

Your OP was an almost identical statement that I heard from George Harrison whilst quoting the Yogi dude. (Sorry I can’t remember His official title.)

Anyway, yeah, now is all we’ve got. And if I had George Harrison’s money then the future would certainly be something that would require little thought or planning. Unfortunately most of us live in a reality where past mistakes haunt us, present conditions are precarious, and future situations plague us.

Condensing life to a set of axioms is pointless and implausible.

ETA: Oh yeah. All you need is love too, right?

65

And that’s the joy of impermanence, in my opinion. Life really sucks in the moment? I can find nothing else to do but thank my lucky stars I’m just passing through. The fact that things always change is a freaking salvation in itself. It’s weird, but once I realize suffering is impermanent, it actually makes me appreciate it a little bit, try to learn from it and use it to open my heart instead of getting so… caught up in it.

66

This is why I think spiritual is not a purely religious word. What you describe is definitely a spiritual experience, but not a religious one.

67

I disagree. As a human being you are fundamentally different from every other animal in that you do not live an integrated life in the kinetic moment. Due to our relatively advanced minds we live almost entirely within a shifting temporal state of past, present, and future, both near and far term. We live within, and through, a blur of temporal probabilities. Our consciousness and our existence itself is a continuous quantum smear. We are a suffused cloud of consciousness being carried around by our body which is the true animal.

What you experienced was simply an ontological sneeze. Chasing that false epiphany is a fool’s errand. You were designed to exist within the blur field, and soon your compass will re-align itself to it’s proper place with that context.

68

[bolding mine]

I agree with the highlighted statement 100%, although rotated 180 degrees.

Trying to break life into a set of axioms, sayings, quotes, mantras, affermations and other pearls of wisdom would be as productive as counting grains of sand on a beach.

Past mistakes only haunt us when we haunt ourselves.
From an internal point of view I believe that many people would like to “Let Go” of their past but that most either have no idea of what that entails or are not prepaired to accept what that entails. To “Let Go” of the past is simply that, let go. Imagine holding a rock with your arm stretched out over a tall bridge. If you let go of that rock it falls away into the chasm. You cannot get it back, if the bottom of the chasm is dark you may not even see it again. You will (and indeed must) always remember that rock, letting go most certainly does not mean to just forget about. Always remember the past, but live like it never happened.

From an external point of view, remember the only person we have control of is ourselves. To forgive or be forgiven means exactly what is mentioned above, Let go. Never forget, just live like it never happened. If we are haunted by another person who cannot find it in themselves to forgive past disgressions then, while truly unfortunate, this is something that we cannot control. Again, even when we are dogged by this person all we can do is Let Go.

Future situations only plague us when we have fear of them.
Fear is a good thing. It keeps us on our toes, catalyzes our feelings into actions and stimulates creative thought. However fear can be crippling, debilitating and cruel. Apples are very nutrishious yet the seeds are poisionous. We eat the apple and throw away the seeds. Potatoes are yummy yet the leaves and stems of the potato are toxic so we eat the potato and throw away the leaves and stems. If we recognize and accept (embrace) our fears, use that acceptance to it’s greatest advantage then conciously choose to discard the painfull worrying, to Let Go of the fretfulness, the toxic part of fear, only then we can draw full nourishment even from the threat of adversity.

Present conditions are precarious, and that’s precisley why the Now is a wonderful place to be. Standing on the edge of time, surfing a temporal wave headlong into the abyss of the great unknown and fully realizing that you are here and now is exhilarating. Being able to enjoy the moment, whether that moment is stressful or serene, painful or joyous; this is what seperates us from the beasts who, while they ride the same wave of reality with us, do so only out of instinct and survival. We get the option to make a choice about accepting each moment and deciding how we are going to live in it.

Anyway, that’s my opinion. That and $7.95 will get you a large cup of coffee, good lord how times have changed.

  • N8 [who is poor as dirt, busier than a cat covering up shit and happy as a clam, but not the steamed kind I ate about 50 of last weekend, more like the smiley kind with no particular place to go.]
69

I learned that it’s really hard to teach a kid how to steer. She got the pedaling down pretty quickly, but she steers like a drunk on the run from the police lights.

I also learned that all “winter birds” are grown-ups. 'Cause the babies aren’t born 'till spring, see, and they grow up by fall time. So any birds you see in the winter are grown-ups. That sort of blew my mind for a little bit.

70

I never said that planning for the future is a bad idea.

Good thing I didn’t do that, then.

ETA: No.

71

That’s adorable.