Trying to Capture Life

Have you had the feeling of wanting to hold on to some event , thing or relationship that has given joy or fulfillment? It seems we are ever wanting to capture and relive our moments of joy. We remember the past and remembering we desire some semblance of repetition. How do we feel things? What prompts the present emotion of past experience? Are we looking for an escape from insecurity? Is it, that the present moment lacks the imagined, the longed for? The mind which is grounded in the self that knows, wants to avoid the reality of the moment. One avoids accepting the moment, out of boredom or fear, so there is escape into what was. Unless the moment provides a familiar respite or a continuity to what is desired then it is avoided or imagined to be what it is not. Disappointment is largely the result of the illusion of projected desire that cannot be realized in the moment. A desire is an idealized image but the image is never the reality.

The mind tries to capture life, an imagined state of the ideal. We desire to become what we perceive to be the ideal. The ideal job or relationship. To acquire what is longed for as the solution to the "problem". How creative we are...mind is able to create the problem and the solution...and very often the solution is the problem. We think in terms of an end. The means is simply the path, obstacles to be overcome in our quest for the desired. But the path, the means is strewn with the destruction of a life half lived, a life filled with despair and loneliness. How much joy, peace and harmony do we miss in our drive for money, power, fame and religion? When we are thinking about the self or what the self can derive from helping others then we lack compassion. Do you assist others for the psychological benefit that you derive from it, or is it done for no reason, a totally selfless act of compassion? Are you anonymous in your approach to helping others, or do you seek acknowledgement? The mind that is trying to capture life is seeking to relive the glory of the illusion of the self absorbed.

If you love without condition or reward, then you act spontaneously to help others. A kind hand or even just a smile is enough to create peace and harmony. Those that seek out the poor and destitute with a mission to accomplish are in reality self serving. They want to feel good about themselves...its about and for the self that is seeking gratification, which is simply another form of greed. If you want to help the poor then start with your own greed see the depth of it, realize that they are poor because you are not. Then you may start living life with awareness and cease the activity of trying to capture the ideals of greed both the psychological and the material.

If you live through your idealistic beliefs then you are lost to the truth. The truth of the self is in freedom. Freedom from the known. The known that is the self serving captured ideals of religion, politics, cultural hegemony and materialistic/psychological greed. Can you be totally aware in the moment of the activity of the self that is seeking recompense for having to just live. Can you go deep within your own psyche and realize selflessness that is without the motivation of a captured ideal. It is the simplicity of the unconditioned, that which has realized the truth of the unknown.