What do the words "presence" and "stillness" mean? How does the dictionary define these words? Unless we understand and agree on what words mean we will be interpreting them and may (most likely) miss the intended point. To resolve the problem, for it is a problem to me until I solve it and I'm absolutely certain I understand exactly what the words mean, when I comes to spiritual terms or explanations, books, lectures, etc. I began asking myself: What has this got to do with me? What has Buddha, Christ, the world at large, the universe has to do with me? Where do I fit in? What has all this got to do with what I am seeking!? At exactly that point, I started moving in the right direction, Self-discovery. What I discovered is that it was not a matter of more and more learning, it had nothing to with passing tests, earning my way to heaven or the afterlife or believing in the man Jesus. What I was looking for is who I really and truly already am--ME. That distilled down to something very simple. It was an out-of-the-blue thought I had when I was about sixteen and then forgot about for years, the years of "the old man": "If I can discover what is real, that will take care of God and everything else." After many, many more years, it then came to this: "What is Real here and now?" I guess I was ready to wake up, because I instantly recognized: "Here and now is real! Why? Here and now is neither a memory or imagined, neither the past or the future--here and now has no past. It was immediately obvious that here and is always here and now (where else?), and this was what I was looking for all along. Some kind of stupid, all those tortuous years! The Real is here and now--and the unreal--the unreal is a false thought identity that was the seeker who like to complain. "When am I going to get it?" he whined. "When am "I" going to get it!?" Never ever--that false fiction will never get more that it's dream self, the "me-sense." I call it the "Monkey mind." There is no getting when it comes to the True vs. false. I like the terms "Here and Now" or "Awareness." There isn't an Awake one throughout recorded time that hasn't referred to NOW. They all do, the Awake all refer to NOW. Here and Now or Awareness. Anyway, that's my sorry story. My only problem when it came to Waking Up! is that I was asleep and dreaming and thought I was the wretched Monkey Mind. I'm not and neither are you. Why? We are One. P.S. I'm absolutely convinced one doesn't have to take the long road to awaking up and smelling the roses. That's like chasing a rainbow, it keeps receding. We eventually have to cut to the chase anyway. The most important thing in life is to understand the Here and Now. That's it. If we don't get it now, we're never going to get it. One for the Rose.
