Stepping past the moment?

The thinking mind has a bad reputation, it is the enemy that is named ego and it contains the illusion that we are the ego, however it is only a problem when you believe the illusion, once that dissolves the thinking mind remains and instead of being it's slave, you become the master of the most advance tool in the world. It has the unique ability to travel through time, it can use the past to learn lessons, it can remember those lessons and then use them to improve your future, it is what gave us our current civilisation from merely being able to make fire in just four hundred generation, it is the tool that every other tool requires for us to use it but it a tool that we have to practise using or it will do us no good. One of it's most powerful uses is in being able to step out of the moment that we find ourselves in, when our emotion are strong we start reacting rather than thinking, however there is always a moment of freewill where we can chose to observe what is happening rather than get caught up in the drama, and we can step forwards in time and reflect in real time on what we would have liked to have done now.

The use of this weapon is not to come up with the best (usually hurtful) line in an argument that proves you are right, that is you still caught up in the moment of emotion, fear or hurt pride, the best action that is available to you does not hurt others, it helps them to learn to be the best version of themselves, which in the long run makes your life better. It is better to remove the weeds rather than pouring poison on it, because in this metaphor you are the garden and the weed is the effect someone else action is having on your garden, it can only grow within you if you let it, and the best way to maintain your garden is by not being fertile ground for the weeds to grow. Which requires careful tending, the compost of self-love that is not dependant on external validation, you have to chase the shadows away from the corners, confront your fears and plant the seeds of healthy self-image and behaviours that grow into mighty trees of character.

It is by planning and foresight that we can imagine the garden that we want to grow, the person that we want to be, what it is that we want and how to get there, though life will always try to overrun you with weeds by giving you moments that suck you back into reacting to the present moment rather than tending it gently and observing the garden for new pests. It is easy to pull the weeds up when they are fresh, it is in the moment before you start reacting, but we can step past this moment and decide what it is that a better version of ourselves would do, what would a loving version do, how would it help the person in front of us to act in a better way, to help them out of the trap of reacting and to a place of observing themselves. You do not always help that person but at least you get to be the sort of people who's intention is to help which gives you the strength to stay focus on the action that hurt rather getting lost in the reaction of judging the person.

Though most of the time the best way to help is to live your own life as an example, it can take a lot of discipline not to try to help someone when they are not ready to change, you do not get to decide that for them. If their actions are hurting you, you get to walk away, disengage and protect your own boundaries, whatever they might be, but no more, first do no harm and trying to convince someone that their action is wrong whilst they are trapped in reacting from fear and pride, is not a good use of your energy and time. You want to save that energy for when they are ready to listen, when they have seen that you are happier and healthier, that you are living a better life and they decide that they want what you have, that is the power of tending your own garden, it attracts the bees to you rather than trying to argue with them to visit you.

It is an attractive energy to cultivate, your ability to mind your own business rather than worrying about everyone else's garden, are they are nicer garden, do they have larger apples, better tended grass, are they larger, got more sunlight. When you are able to focus solely on what you are doing, that single minded attention improves what you are doing exponentially compare to multitasking a dozen worries and distractions. If someone wants to talk about your garden, that is great, though it is not a moment for pride rather a discussion of the actions you had to take to overcome the problems you had in tending it and by showing rather than telling you are giving someone a far more powerful lesson than a hurtful one liner that protect your self-image and pride. It is certainly a long game, but so is growing a garden, it takes many seasons not just one busy day and when you let the thinking mind run around like a out of control puppy, you are never going to find any peace in there.

It such slow work that it is only with the tool of a thinking mind that you can imagine the outcomes of all this work that we have to do to get there, making a good garden out of your mind is not easy but what is truly good that is also easy? We were not made for easy, it is boring and uninteresting, we were made for the rough and tumble of life, it is exciting and dangerous but the rewards of a good life are amazing and worth the efforts of thousands of hours of deliberate practice, and if a child can put in the effort to learn to talk, walk, read, write, why can you not be the child of the future adult that you want to be by putting in the work today.

The beauty of not trying to build the garden of Eden in a day is that everyday is easier, the steady work of seasons, you just have to pick the one thing that needs to de done, that you want to do today and get it done. You step past the moment and see the moment that you are creating in the future, you plant the seeds today because you can see the bed of rocket salad in your future, you can imagine, envision it, almost taste it, and it does not matter that you are going to have to water it everyday, watch out for slugs and that nothing is certain, we can take a hopeful action today because of that ability to see the future.

We know the consequences of failing to see the future, we see it in our out of control anger, in the nasty things we say, in the quick judgement that we hold, our reaction to fears that disappear in hours or day. Witnessing our poor actions should be the only necessary evidence that we need to want to change our behaviour, as long as we notice and accept it, and we are so busy, continuously stressed that it can become difficult to observe what is actually going on in our own lives. That is why we have to choose to bring those actions into our awareness, just learning about it and being open to the idea that sometimes we make poor decision in the moment, and even the mind is open to this criticism, it is aware, that is why we have shame and guilt, the mind is trying to bring our awareness to the fact that we have acted poorly, but how we act upon those feeling is up to us.

I hope just by talking about it, it opens you up to the idea that time travel is possible, that there is a choice in the moment before we start reacting, there is a breath where we had two choices between our good and bad wolves, our inner voices that advocate for love and fear. It is a small window of opportunity, you have to ready to take the good path, the higher path where we get to look down on our actions, reactions, how our bodies feel and take the braver, bolder position where we might lose the battle but win the war. That is what better action looks like, it means not winning the struggle between egos, rather it leaves the path open to better long term communication where you are not trying to hurt someone, you are instead on their side and the side that wants the best for everyone. It is a skill that has to be practised, but what a gift to your future self, that is caring for yourself, to take a hard path to somewhere better, where you are able to step past the present moment and imagine a better future.