Memories are your own mental states that you can visit.
- Assuming that you are not a buddhist, and that you accept the continuity of your existence, either during your present birth or across various births as the Gita tells us, these things actually happened.
- Things that happen alter the probability that they will happen again.. sometimes favourably and sometimes unfavourably.
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Dreams are your own mental states that express hopes, fears or reasonable estimates of what might “happen” to you in future.
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Now! is what lots of people have problems with. They are looking for ways to divert themselves from the fact of “Now” with jobs, games, company, study and any activity or experience that diverts them from the fact that “Now” is happening. “What will you do” they ask, “If you don’t have a job? How will you pass time? You need an avocation. You need to structure your time. Its not about money, Its about time.. An idle mind is a… ” and so on.
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Our spiritual elders tell us the opposite. They tell us not to
rely on and Extend our senses, but use
Meditation as a way to God. In meditation we sit in a quiet place., doing “nothing”, no seeing, touching, tasting, hearing, smelling. We let go of our memories and dreams and plans for a while and we just “be”.
The hope is that if we don’t “feed our manas” with sensory inputs, then it will exhaust its memories, dreams and other thoughts and look at the Sakshi! The “I”! And that we are told is happiness beyond anything the senses can dish out!
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The “I” that is writing these words, which for an
advaitin, is the same as the “you” that is reading these words, which is the same as the Brahman, that is responsible for all we see around us.
IMG_0010 : Photo Credit : Son and Friends : All Rights Reserved : Satya Sarada Kandula
While I enjoy nature and activity, I find human company intoxicating and addictive and suffer severe withdrawal symptoms in the “absence” of those persons… (ie I miss my friends 
)
Yet the happiest moments of my life have been those in which I had no pressing demands on me, no deadlines, no work that I had better get done “right away”.. or it will be too late/inconvenient/disastrous. The moments when I could just “be” without fear of disturbance or distraction.
My manas has briefly touched and wondered at the Sakshi and wants like all small children to “do it again”.
Yet life presents me with a never ending In-Tray, which fills up as soon as I empty it out and I begin to resent that I have no time for my Self.
Wise Gurus recommend that we spend an hour a day in meditation just as we allocate an hour a day for walk or exercise or dinner. They ask us to pick a quiet morning hour before the sun has risen and the world demands we attend to our In-Trays.
To find God Here (iha), we must face the Now! We must make time for the Now!
Authorship and Copyright Notice : All Rights Reserved : Satya Sarada Kandula
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.
O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to GOD.
Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust.
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