Every experience that comes my way has its own process of journey and destination – the chain of causal relationships that is arising from each intention I give to it, moment after moment. Motivated by ideas, intentions change from time to time, creating a vast richness of experience to each journey. There is no one journey that is the same though the destination arrived may look similar – all roads lead to Rome.
All my experience is on the journey, not the destination as that is what I am exactly experiencing right now. My joyful or upset feelings from each experience are derived from the accumulated processes of ideas and intentions that begun since its inception. Thus if I missed the process of the journey, I would have missed how the emotion is derived. I would have no inkling what brought about my joy or upset, except to make a conclusion out of it.
If I am upset I would have make you the victim of my upset – but that cannot be true as the processes that is going through me prior to the experience can be triggered by many other reasons – from my primitive believe system to whatever ideas that I am gathering and concluding at each moment. If your idea is not in coherent with me, I would unawaringly defense myself, and doing so makes me feel that you are attacking me. Having all this processes in mind, I am not with you, not to mentioned hearing you. I am drowned in my own thoughts and feelings. How then can it be true that you are the cause of my upset?
In the same way, my joy cannot be caused by you or anything in the world. All my emotions and feelings are the product of my own interpretations – that is what the journey is made up of. The result, which is the destination, is determined by what I give into the process – the mind is a melting pot – what I put in is what I will taste.
To focus on the destination is to ignore the richness of the journey. To ignore the journey is to miss each every destination that is arriving at my doorstep. If I am unable to see each moment of destination, I am unable to see the reasons or causes of my destination. Many causes creates my destination – many momentary destinations culminate my end result. If I am not here with each moment, my end result is just a superficial experience.
My process of creation is more important than what I am finally creating – the taste of the pudding is in the eating, not the pudding. Destination is just an after effect, nothing more beyond that. All final experiences are basically just that – byproducts. Joy, jealousy, anger, happiness, love, upsets – are all derived result of a journey that I may have ignored. I keep searching for joy, I keep seeking for happiness and I keep escaping from upset situations, not realizing that my true spiritual test is occurring here at each moment – the attitude I give into what I am projecting. Other than here and now, there is nothing in the future as when the future arrived, it is always here in the now, nowhere else.
My life will be lived in vain if I don’t see this important lesson. I am only addicted to chasing after something that is non-existential. What a dream, what a waste.
There is no death except the culmination of life. Where the process of life ends, there arise the meaning of death. Death is not a place or an end itself except a meaning given to an end of a process called life. Life is a cause, death is an effect. Without life, there is no possibility of death. What then is life when I keep missing the now that is unfolding right here in me. Hence to be mindful and aware is my gift, as it helps me to experience life fully, understanding the true nature of things as they really are. To be aware, I have to keep reminding myself to stay in the moment.
If I were to think that there is something much more important than what I am now, I will be pursuing an imaginary journey that may or may not have a destination that I am desiring. So long as I am not present to myself, I am constantly creating redundant journey of expectations.
Similarly, enlightenment is not a place. I keep trying to do things to arrive at enlightenment. I try to be good, I try to please the God(s), I try sacrificial acts of rites and rituals, I will do practically anything to arrive there, wherever it is. I am desperate. But each trying is only bringing me further away from enlightenment. For each trying is creating another redundant journey that has nothing to do with enlightenment. Enlightenment is simply the end of ignorance, of bondage – the bondage to the delusion of self, of “I”. Thus my journey towards enlightenment is to continuously look into myself, to observe and investigate what bondage am I creating – bondage that is binding me from experiencing freedom. If I don’t experience little freedom now, I do not expect to experience greater freedom later. Freedom is the undoing of bondage, the bondage of delusion.