Releasing stories and recognizing the Now

When you see your thoughts like a conscious sky sees clouds coming and going, they are no longer unwelcome. They simply are, existing in the boundless Now. They can be embraced as mere experience, another image on the flickering TV of the mind. You, as Awareness, remain untouched and the true ‘Present Moment’ is allowed to unfold at its own will.

But we tend to get sucked in. We identify with the images. We follow a screenplay of our own creation. We play the role. And we believe that the drama or the play is reality.

Our thoughts and our perception are nothing more than mental images that we turn into stories. Depending on our wiring, we can create a horror story or a fantasy out of the same situation. Infinite possibilities exist when it comes to stories, and the one we follow is entirely down to our mental and emotional conditioning.

But zoom out and you’re sitting on the sofa, looking at the screen of your mind. You notice that while sitting and staring blankly into space, in your mind you ran through an entire plot and an outcome. And none of it actually happened. And it might not ever happen. It was all a figment of your imagination, a story of your mind’s creation.

The problem is that we are not trained to zoom out. We believe our own stories, get worked up emotionally, drain ourselves with worry, yet it’s all just happening in our heads. Our minds cannot tell a real experience from an imagined one, that is why we all love a good ‘gripping’ movie. Try to imagine the sun just above your head on a very hot day and you may even break into a sweat. And this inability to distinguish between fact and fiction is precisely the obstacle in our way.

The book of life is unfolding, chapter by chapter – it is what we came here to do, have a human experience through our mind and the senses, right? But only as long as we don’t take our imagination too seriously can we enjoy life and play with it.

Do we approach life as an exciting adventure or a dreadful struggle? That initial perception in itself will create altogether different stories. Positive affirmations, the Law of Attraction, and all that ‘Secret’ stuff is fine, if what you’re looking for is to create a dream of your liking.

Greater still is to wake up from the dream. Then you can enjoy lucid dreaming at its best, whereby you’re awake in the dream or book of life. You are still able to partake in and enjoy the dream, but know that you’re dreaming a dream of your creation. It is being able to see it all as it is, right here, right now. You are aware of yourself as the dreamer and of the stories unfolding in the dream. You see the stories everyone else is creating. And that it’s all happening within the boundless Now. 

The Now cleverly disguises itself in order to experience all the drama, passion and suspense that can only come from complete identification. But actually, what it all boils down to, is that it is just the Play of the Absolute!

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