Why the Future Never Happens- A Look at Donkeys, a '72 Impala, and God

 Nasrudin, the wise fool, lived on the edge of the village. One day while the villagers were busy preparing to go on their annual religious pilgrimage, Nasrudin came riding into the marketplace on his donkey, thrashing about wildly. The people tried to calm his agitated animal, and asked, "Nasrudin, what is the matter?" Nasrudin replied: 

"Get out of my way… I'm looking for my donkey!"
 

With some confusion, they exclaimed, "But Nasrudin, you are RIDING your donkey!" 

Nasrudin had a point that they were missing-- his neighbors were preparing to travel for three days to go and find God, that omnipresent being who's greatest trick so far was to already be everywhere at once. The people of the village didn't understand Nasrudin's meaning. To them, he just seemed absent-minded.

Finding The Donkey

 
A single molecule in the front fender of a gigantic 1972 Impala may not realize that it is part of such a classic pimped-out ride, and the little molecule may cruise the streets it's whole life without ever realizing it. It may wonder where the Great Impala dwells, or when it will someday meet the mighty Vehicle. The molecule has imagined a future involving the classic car, but never dares to imagine that it is actually already an integral part of the immense golden land yacht, rolling down the street with style right now. The molecule has no clue.

Ego Owns the Future

 There is a part of mind-- a chattery thing-- which always frolics in the future or the past, but never in the present. This noisy 'voice' that we hear is constantly trying to get us to drift away from reality, either into the future or the past.  

The voice is that of our ego, a tool which is supposed to protect us from danger, among other things, but the ego-mind's constant references to past dangers and then the persistent crafting of future problems can sometimes be the dominant voice in the mind's chatter, as if protecting us from an imagined danger, but really luring us away from the moment, the present; reality. Only this instant is real. Everything else is imaginary.

 TIME = NO Ice Cream

Time is for grown-ups. Children, until they are around eight years old, have no firm concepts of abstract things like time. If a child is told, "We are going to get ice cream in one hour", the young mind hears only "ICE CREAM" and gets excited, then disappointed when the adult tries to explain what an 'hour' is to the poor thing. Essentially, the careless adult has just told the child, "No ice cream for you." 

 
Children eventually learn to hear adults with caution, but meanwhile, a child exists exactly when existence is happening, the only reality that is-- now. 

This is probably what the Bible was talking about, translated by Francis Bacon or whoever wrote it all down, where Jesus says something like "Suffer not the little children unto me, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven!"

 To understand Bacon's language here, we might download a Shakespeare to English translator app, and find that the quote could have meant; "The kids are alright, let them chill-- they live in reality all of the time!"
 The kids don't waste their imagination going into planning ahead with minutes or hours into non-existent futures, or trying to use the long-gone past as a tool to exist in their world, they are busy being.

Ego = Devil?

The ego-mind has nothing to do in the present, it can't abide with this instant. That ego-mind is also probably the Bible's 'devil', always tempting mortals away from their divinity, or away from the reality of living and being now. The Church, of course, takes full advantage of ego and imagined futures, inventing Heaven and Hell as the only choices. The Church deals in mind, past and future, and doesn't do well with 'now'. It's possible that the Church has never done well 'now', because now is reality, and that's none of their business.

 The ego very nearly rules the physical world, even as it can never directly participate in it. Consciousness, however, can flow into the physical world easily-- it is doing it now.

 When present, the human is completely in touch with creation, and needs no middle-man to experience reality when being. That's when we 'find our donkey'.

 When we are 'being' is when consciousness can access the physical world through our awareness, our own recognition of what is. 

The actual moment of now is all that can be real, if you think about it for a second. 

Actually, Nasrudin, the wise fool, usually says things best: 

One day Nasrudin saw a traveler standing on the other side of a river. The traveler called out to Nasrudin, "How do I get across?" Nasrudin called back "You ARE across!"
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images by Pixabay

 
@therealpaul