No wonder most of us seek refuge in the past or prefer to fret about the future. The present is all about the game of life, but we choose not to play. We are living a fear-based no-life.
A lot of therapies deal with overcoming our fears, as do various New Age courses. Perhaps you did a fire-walk or bungee jump or trust fall at one or more of them. I recall one from nearly 20 years back where we had to individually go off into the night and ask strangers for money.
But that is only lesson one. Then the hard work starts. Cultivating a disciplined mind takes time. Lots of time. It’s not easy when the world around us is frightening, when we overreact to our environment and we can’t think our way clear. It’s not easy when there is something wrong in our brain circuits, when false alarms keep going off and there is no switch to turn them off.
So great is our fear factor that we are afraid of change, of actually improving our lives. As frightful as the present may be, we often prefer the comfort of our wretched existence to the prospect of the unknown.
“Don’t worry - be happy.” That’s not a cop-out. It’s actually our toughest challenge. The Buddha said much the same thing. It’s also there in the Sermon on the Mount:
"Behold the lilies of the field. They toil not nor do they spin but even Solomon was never dressed like them ... “
This is where we need to get serious about know thyself, mindfulness, and stress-management. Let the games begin ...
