Ah, the grand illusion,” the master murmured to his eager learners. “The mind weaves a deceptive story, making you believe you are moving forward, that the future is just ahead—a destination to reach, something to chase, someone to become.”
But take a moment and look—there is no future. It is not a destination or a time. It is simply the present moment, stretched and molded by the echoes of past thoughts, desires, and regrets, all swirling within the breeze of your awareness. The present—the now—is all there is. It is the only truth.
Pause and reflect: The past? A fleeting shadow, a soft whisper fading in silence. The future? A distant mirage, a dream that never quite arrives, and when it does, it’s nothing more than your past reshaped and reimagined. Both are faces of the same illusion, each as fleeting and elusive as the other.
And yet, you cling to them as if they define you and make you real. But you are no more your past than you are your future. You are the vast, uncontainable, ever-unfolding, limitless presence, perpetually reborn in each moment, with no beginning to trace, no end to reach, and no origin to confine you.
Take note: when you identify with the narrative of your past, you may feel like you become this or that—a character shaped by stories you’ve lived. But you are not a story, a past already written, or a future waiting to unfold. You simply are.
You exist, but you are not the breeze that whispers through the trees, the waves that crash upon the shore, or the clouds that drift across the sky. These things come and go, fleeting and ever-changing.
And you? You are that which always remains. There is no fixed identity—only the continuous flow of the ever-present “now.”
So, in truth, you are always beginning. Each moment is fresh, each breath new. Yet, the small self clings to the illusion of a journey—the treadmill of endless striving, the sense of “getting somewhere.”
But look closely—there is no “there.” The treadmill moves, your feet move, but you remain exactly where you’ve always been—in the present. There is no distance to cover, no destination to reach. The path is already pathless, and in chasing the future, you only run deeper into the arms of the present.
And when the future arrives, it always arrives in the now. You remain “still,” ever-present within the motion, and there is all there is in that stillness.
You are the stillness, the “now,” while the “small self” is the motion, drifting between past and future. Be still and awaken to the truth: the “I AM.”
You are neither forward nor backward. As pure consciousness, you were never born and will never die; you have always been, are, and will be in this moment—forever.
The key is to release the illusion of movement and simply “be.” You are not defined by what has been or what is yet to come. The present moment, free from attachment to the past or future, is the essence of freedom itself.
And so, here you are, effortlessly being—drifting, yet still, alive with endless vibrancy, free from the chains of time and form. An awakening stirs in silence, a breath suspended in quiet expectancy, a presence that slips through the mind’s grasp. No name. No history. No past, No future. Only the boundless expanse of this moment.
You are neither this nor that. Simply the endless unfolding of “I AM.”
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