Living, Now!
Benjamin Teixeira de Aguiar by the Spirit Eugênia-Aspásia
There are many motives for you to be happy, but the main one is simply to be alive. Be careful not to let the everyday rush suffocate your capacity to enjoy every instant of your existence. Do not wait to become a grumpy old person to realize that you threw your life away, and that it is too late to recover what has no return…
Well, even if you lose a year!… What is the price of one year of life? What is the price of one day after another when they are not lived in happiness? Happiness is not an exceptional state of being and feeling: it is the natural state. To systematically suffer, or be distressed or empty, is a sign of severe emotional and spiritual illness. Do not give in to the pathology of our current era. In the future, human beings will tremendously pity the inhabitants of today’s earthly world for not getting the basic of the basics: to live in peace and happiness.
Therefore, break this vicious cycle, right now. Reserve time for you, take long and soothing baths, listen to good music, relax in fraternal conversation with beloved ones, rest in the company of friends when having meals (at least once a day) and, above all: set aside time to pray and/or meditate.
You will not save humanity by stressing yourself further, by depriving yourself of spending time with relatives (spirit or blood related), by forgetting to live, to be in peace, or to breathe. To work more does not mean to be more responsible or more efficient. Quite the contrary: resting time increases work performance during work hours, and the time spent on interpersonal relationships, especially the time dedicated to the loved ones you chose to live with, is sacred. To lessen this time, beyond the measure that the conscience authorizes, in order to channel it to the mere and compulsive pursuit of material achievement, constitutes a criminal attitude.
Furthermore, also be careful not to live constantly “traveling” in time, disconnected from the only complete reality that is tangible to you: the present. In the dominant culture of the globe, a large part of the population hardly ever manages to be effectively in “the now.” Either they focus on continuously planning the future, or they consume themselves in indolent and obsessive recollections of the past. To plan for the future is important the same way that to learn with the lessons of the past is as well. However, to live in an uninterrupted trance, disconnected from the present moment, constitutes a mild psychosis that blinds the individual’s lucidity, making him go through life mechanically without in fact living.
You certainly agreed with my ideas, and you may be saying to yourself, “Right! This is exactly what I would like to do, but I cannot.” However, friend, aside from this habit, which can be deprogrammed and substituted for another, there is also the need to change the set of principles that underlies your behavior –a philosophy of life that, consciously or unconsciously, drives your existence, your way of being, of thinking, and of acting. In addition, it is for this hidden set of values that I say:
1) Do not worry with results. Do not think only on the product of your work. Enjoy the process of realizing it. The one who only thinks of the outcomes of his toil, finishing an activity to immediately engage in another, never truly feels the pleasure of producing, which does not happen at the end but rather during the whole process. In this manner, one can never be in flux, as said technically, to represent the performance at a level of excellence – in other words, paradoxically, the one who does not flow with the present moment, unconcerned with the production, produces less and with low quality.
2) Free yourself from the preoccupation with appearances. Those who are very concerned with the opinion of others – worried with meeting imposed or self-imposed models of expectation – live for others, and not for themselves. They are slaves to conventions, and not masters of themselves, their choices, and their destinies… They are not free, and do not think for themselves.
3) Think that nothing is worthy if you cannot be happy, now. Tomorrow is an abstraction. Today is the reality. As a matter of fact, the tomorrow will be a today as well, which only will be lived well if you have learned to fully enjoy the moments of now.
With these simple suggestions, I hope that you agree with my view that too much rush only serves to turn you into a machine and to anticipate your physical death, in a way that will end up leaving everything behind and will arrive at the Other Side of Life empty, without you having lived what passed, and without having the right of living what would come…
Think seriously… now! Do not wait for years, old age, misfortunes, illnesses, and biological death to come and warn you about what is obvious, when there is no longer time in the current physical life to correct the disaster…
Thought should exist for the administration of life, but it does not substitute life itself. Manage your existence with care; however, do not forget that life itself is the principal and essentially unique value that you have. Life is not to be thought, life is to be lived.
(Message received on 04 January 2000.)