This is Dan from Vagabond Buddha. I want to talk a little bit about the wisdom of the present moment. The present moment is called different things, enlightenment, the absence of suffering, silence of mind.
It is what I believe all the spiritual leaders are hinting at in one way or another, and I’m including historical religious leaders in that. If you if are being the I Am, you have access to wisdom that is manifest, without thinking over all the factors you have learned in your life.
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The wisdom from the present moment is something that’s present. I love the bird up there. The wisdom is something that’s continually fed to you, or is available to you when you’re in the present moment. I just want to talk a little bit about how that feels different from the wisdom formed during your time on Earth, or your personality if you will.
So you have a physical manifestation born into this world. Since then, you have over time, based upon your location in space (x, y, z, time), likely somewhere on the surface the planet at a given moment, learned things.
You have a memory and much of it you don’t catalog or remember, but some of it you do. When a problem comes up in your life, you access the relevant information you’ve learned throughout your life and you compare the present threat or situation to that (x, y, z, t) knowledge, and you come to a conclusion, that I’ll call personal wisdom.
And the mind has a purpose, which is my observation of what the mind thinks it’s doing, I don’t have any scientific evidence. It is just my internal thinking observations, my mind has a personal purpose that is based upon the information in the values and beliefs I’ve stored (x, y, z, t) throughout my life.
It listens to all the factors involved in the problem and comes up with a proposed solution. It may mull it over for a while but eventually, my mind pulls the trigger with an action. The action is based upon this 4-dimensional paradigm (x, y, z, t) of information, knowledge, or belief, and once you decide to act, you pull the trigger on that action.
My experience of that process is that it is personalized. Meaning, the process doesn’t have all the information. So sometimes when you pull the trigger on an action it turns out as you thought. Other times it does not. When the action does not create the expected outcome, you are often in pain. The pain is caused by the fear that you x,y,z,t model of the world was wrong. Something is missing from your analysis.
By the way, I’m in a city walking. There are cars driving down the road. So expect noises. This should not make any difference.
My sense is that you take actions based upon a conversation in your head that uses the x,y,z,t model in your head. Additionally, we have a sort of public voice and a private voice in our head. The private voice is what you really want. The public voice is kind of saying, “Well I could do that (what the private voice wants), but it won’t look good–I’ll look like an ass if I do that.” The public voice will try to come up with another socially acceptable reason to get what your private voice wants. Your public voice will try to arrive at a solution your private voice wants.
It is kind of an inner turmoil that you have if the two voices disagree. Ultimately you really don’t believe you are such an ass if your private voice wants something offensive. For most people, their public voice will be able to keep their private voice within the guardrails of reason.
But I’m talking about something different here. I’m talking about a pre-birth wisdom, that your x,y,z,t personality has no access to. You only have access to this pre-birth wisdom when your mind is silent. You only have access to this wisdom when your public and private voices are silent. While your mind is silent, somehow you’re communicating with an infinite wisdom.
There’s an infinite wisdom available to you if your mind is silent or if you learn that you are something infinite in which your mind exists, and you recognize what the mind is doing.
There is a freedom from suffering that happens at the moment you’re enlightened. Often during enlightenment, there is a silence of the mind, what some people call being with God or awareness of the one source. There is nothing you need.
There is nothing missing regardless of your circumstances whether you’re in a prison cell, a war, terrible relationship or in the middle of being offended in some; or everything is wonderful and you’re swimming in your pool and flowers around you; you can be in the what I call the present moment.
You could call it being with God if you like. And when you’re in that place of enlightenment, that place of the silent mind, there is a silent … it’s not a whisper it’s just an un-debated answer to action, or to a situation. There’s a peacefulness to the presence.
You somehow know what the action is you should take in that situation.
My experience is that the actions you take in those moments, and this is the important part. Your mind is telling you, “Oh, you don’t want to use my secret mind? You know I will make it look good by the public mind.” So your mind is worried that it is going to lose control somehow, so your mind will raise the hair on your back somehow to put itself back in control.
But my experience when I’m in present moment awareness when I take action is that the action taken has an elegance to it. The action or no action I should say has an elegance to it.
When I’m present in those situations. And I am just the I AM, and I let the wisdom of the ages live through me, the actions I take, if there is any action taken, has an elegance to it.
An elegance that doesn’t seem to create more problems in my life or other people’s lives, when viewed from the long term.
How do you know if you are taking action or inactions from that place of elegance in the present moment awareness.
Everything else I spoke about earlier was to get to this idea.
You’ll know you’re there because:
-You’re in the present moment meaning that you’re aware of everything around you in all directions all at once.
-When you’re choosing out of the present moment awareness, it doesn’t have a personality aspect to, it is not accessing your memory about similar experiences, it’s not imagining possibilities for each action you might take, it’s not a debate between your private and public voice.
-It is choosing from that wider place of wisdom. The I AM doesn’t really even pay attention to your personal preferences such as your private or public voice, because your mind is silent.
-It’s not your personality deciding to do anything or not.
-There’s not any pain in the decision or worry.
Actions and inactions from the present moment create an effortless path. This unmanaged communication or God if you like, is living in infinite wisdom. The actions or no actions are consistent with a wisdom that flows through you that you are not managing. You don’t really own the wisdom, it is sort of available to you when your mind is quiet.
So that’s how you know if you’re making decisions from the present moment. They’re going to elegantly happen without your force or control and they’re not going to be about making yourself look good or bad. They’re not really about you.
I personally believe that some kind of communication with God happens when you live with a silent mind.
You just live in presence. You move gracefully in presence and you live your life in presence. That’s about all I have to say. Thanks for tuning in to sit down a vagabond bit of oh by the way.
If you are interested in present moment awareness, please click and subscribe to the below Present with Vagabond Buddha Youtube Channel.