My brain is built to use my past to forecast a future so it can keep my body alive.
And it works incredibly well, but I’d be wise to be careful because the whole mechanism hinges on an illusion: that I am what my past and future say I am. And when I believe the illusion, the system can go haywire and I can end up serving the illusion at the expense of the reality. In the extreme, it can end up killing my body to keep my story alive. And it’s all an innocent mistake.
Past and future can only exist in the mind. They are imaginary. So the “I” I believe myself to be because of my past and future (otherwise known as “ego”) is also imaginary.
There is life beyond ego that cannot die, which is always happening. It’s happening now. And I have access to it now. All I have to do is question any thought of a “me” that has a definite past and future. What I really am is what I am without those imaginary encumbrances. That is the real me.
That me lives what Jesus refers to as “eternal life:” A life perfectly centered in the present moment and undisturbed by past and future.
THAT is real life. It’s the only real life.
As long as I cling to ego, I am out of real life. I am playing in a dream. A self-perpetuating dream bent on its own survival, working hard to perpetuate everything it dreams.
When the dream turns dark, my ego - with its incentive to identify a past and predict a future that will prove its dream to be true - will keep the dark dream going just to keep itself alive, turning up the darkness as far as it needs to go to continue to exist, even if the dream becomes a nightmare.
The solution is to understand what’s going on: that my brain is being used by its own imaginary identity to keep the identity’s fictional existence going.
When I understand this, the life of my ego becomes equivalent to the life of my video game character: important within the story of the game but completely inconsequential outside it. I am NOT this person:
me, the abused one;
me, the offended one;
me, the persecuted one;
me, the misunderstood one;
me, the broken, unworthy, unloved or unlovable one;
me the one who must prepare, defend, or fight for what’s his.
These are all imaginary “me’s.” As are…
me, the wise one;
me, the special one;
me, the admired one;
me, the favored one.
I can play in any identity as long as it suits me, as long as the trials and tribulations of this imaginary character are enjoyable. And then, when I’ve had enough, I can sigh a satisfied sigh or think, “whoa that was crazy” or feel a sense of triumph and then set it aside, knowing it’s all just imagination.
Then I can get on with real life.