Tonight I had a great experience. Sometimes I sort of ask myself, in short, “is that it?” and feel a kind of temporary sadness with how everything is. Nowadays however, I examine more regularly how I’m experiencing the moment and so the answer to that question is usually, basically, “isn’t this enough?” “why is this not enough?”. And then I think how lucky I am and how great it is that I have my kids and my parents etc… this happens from time to time. But tonight it was different because simply there was no question at all about if “this is enough”. I experienced the moment and how it’s unique and unrepeatable. There never was this unique body and mind in this unique here and now. I wasn’t worried about the moment passing. It was simply a peaceful and perfect experience. Perfect in that sense that it couldn’t be any other way. And I didn’t want it to be any other way. This is not the first time this occurs but tonight it was more experienced and less intellectualized (if that makes sense).
Some other thoughts that are clear and used to not be clear at all in the past:
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Reconciling being harmless and acting in self-defense. It is pretty obvious. I may have read this on the website but now it’s clear for me. If they attack you, you fight back not as a natural reflex, or because you want to hurt them back, but simply out of the necessity of addressing the situation. You are doing what needs to be done in the way possible.
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How can you not nurture your own children? It’s not that you suddenly disconnect or abandon them. You simply want them to be able to live their lives and that requires you to stay out of the way. You don’t intervene. You still provide and help when they need and ask for help, but you want them to be on their own. You don’t want them or anyone to depend on you. You needed that because you needed to feel needed.
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You act lovingly towards your wife not out of love but because you are afraid of losing her. As if you could possibly own her or anyone else. It’s the same thing as nurturing. You want them to be happy and that means independence from you.
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By being harmless you are already helping everyone without being altruistic in the traditional sense. You are harmless if you manage to deconstruct your biological and social conditioning. Once you understand those you realize when you judge people and why you are judging them, when you are mean and why you are being mean, etc…
It’s all connected and it all starts with “how am I experiencing this moment of being alive”. A seemingly superficial and unoriginal question.