The Value of the Moment; Fear of the Unknown

**nerve** · 10-20-2007 04:04 AM

I was thinking today about the value of the moment. it's been said many times, and no doubt you've heard it before: "live in the moment". recently I've noticed, more and more, that I now understand something I'd heard many times before, but for some reason did not understand before. and in every case, I thought I had understood it before, the whole time. I can't be alone, either: I've heard plenty of cases of someone saying something like, "I'd heard this a million times before, but never understood it until now."

so what does it mean to live in the moment? if you try to focus on a moment, you may find it isn't easy...all you see is time passing. how can you focus on a moment if it is constantly slipping away? you'd have to close your eyes and concentrate...focus on a single moment. what is a single moment like?

it is like nothing. in order to experience a single moment, you would have to bring it to a hault; you would have to stop time. and if you stopped time, there would be...nothing.

that's what a moment is: nothing. in order to experience a moment, you have to leave everything. you have to meditate, clear your mind. basically, stop time. you are detaching yourself from everything; you are stepping out of everything and into nothing.

in the moment, worldly possessions do not matter.

in the moment, any bitter relationship you have does not matter.

in the moment, you have no needs, you are not suffering.

in the moment, nothing matters...

you can only see everything once you've experienced nothing, once you've experienced the moment.
only when you are in the moment can you observe and evaluate your life, every aspect of it. when you're involved in it, you become attached to it, it has your attention. you can't really evaluate it because you're in it.

but if you step outside of it and look it over, you can see it for what it really is. you are not attached to any part of it, so you are not biased. you can see the truth that way. ("nothingness" does not have extremes...) you can look at your present and see that maybe things you were troubled over, really don't matter. you can see that nothing really matters.

nothing really matters, so why trouble yourself over anything? why worry?

nothing matters in the grand scheme of everything. what is the grand scheme of everything? is it everything that is? the sum of everything in existence? if we were to find that total, if we were to know everything that existed...altogether, at once, you'd get nothing. everything, in a moment, is nothing. everything cannot be known at once.

so why worry? the unknown must exist in order for us to exist. you may say, "yeah, we exist. so what? it isn't always that great. what about suffering?" that's true, but the only time you have real suffering is when you fear the unknown. if you don't fear it, you will be happy. if you never fear the unknown, you can always be happy, and you can be very open and learn a lot. you can learn a lot, because you won't be afraid to dive into it (seek the truth).

what about death? that's something to be afraid of, right? what happens to people after they die? is it good or bad?

we see people die. we know there was something in them (their spirit?), controlling their physical bodies. matter doesn't just move by itself, right? everything that moves depends on something else. so when they stop moving, what has changed? what was making them move, and where did it go? did it become nothing? we don't know. it is unknown.

so why be afraid? you do not know what will happen, and as long as you're alive, you will not know. so why let it bother you? why suffer over it? you will never know as long as you live, so there is no sense in suffering over it at all while you're alive.

be happy. you can, if you choose to. if you choose not to be afraid of the unknown, you will be so much happier. you won't be worried about death, so you can live. when you're afraid of something, it has power over you. it makes you suffer. no one would ever choose to suffer, and so, it has power over you. if you don't fear anything, nothing has power over you. not even death.

this is true. personally, I don't believe people become nothing after they die, not exactly. if you think about it, they never really were anything in the first place...their spirit, I mean. their spirit was not physical at all, it was...nothing. if they did not have their bodies, they would have nothing. all of their individuality came from their bodies, from the physical. if one were to fully concentrate on themselves, in their mind, they would see nothing. that's because they are nothing. the spirit is unlike any physical thing. we describe it with the physical, through the physical, but it is not the physical things themselves. it is nothing. it is unknown.

in order for existence to be, the physical depends on the spiritual and the spiritual depends on the physical. if you knew that your spirit was nothing, that there is no "you", then what would matter to you? nothing. nothing would be important to you, nothing would matter to you, because you'd realize that you are nothing.

because you are nothing, what do you have to lose? if you died, you would not have a physical form anymore, and what is left? your spirit, which is nothing.

but the thing is, existence gives meaning to nothingness. the idea of "nothingness" exists only because we exist. in reality, there is no such thing as nothing.

there is no such thing as nothing.

by definition, everything that exists, is.

nothing is not a thing.

nothing does not exist.

why fear what does not exist? you will always exist somehow. and I believe that if you do not fear the unknown, your life will be happy, and your energy will be positive. if you succumb to fear, and suffer, your energy will be negative. I think that if you have positive energy when you die, your existence afterwords will somehow be positive, whereas if you die with negative energy it will be negative.

that is just what I believe personally, I believe in reincarnation. but even if that isn't true, you must admit, that being afraid of what happens after you die is pointless; so it's better not to worry and to just be happy. even if reincarnation is not true, if you live a good life, you will go to heaven. and if heaven doesn't exist either, there is still no point in worrying, because we don't know now and the best thing to do is be happy while we can.

thanks for reading, and I'm sorry if I rambled.

any thoughts?

**NonDualistic** · 10-20-2007 04:35 AM

The only thing I could add would be that in that nothingness is true peace and bliss, and in that the nothingness there is no emptiness, but complete and total fullness .