Hello again and welcome.
My name is Pratiga.
Today I'd like to invite you into a simple recognition.
One that may seem surprising at first.
Yet has always been quietly true.
You never have been anywhere else.
They may sound impossible.
After all,
You have travelled.
Who have lived in different locations,
Known different people.
Experience different chapters of your life.
Childhood.
Adulthood,
Times of joy,
Times of sorrow,
Surely you have been somewhere else.
And yet,
Have you?
Take a moment and simply notice.
Right now,
This moment is here.
The breath is here.
The sounds around you are here.
The feeling of the body is here.
Even this thought.
Appears here.
Now think of a memory.
Perhaps something from many years ago.
Notice.
Where does that memory appear?
Not in the past.
It appears here.
Now imagine tomorrow,
A hope,
A plan,
A concern.
Where does that future appear?
It too appears to be.
The mind speaks of yesterday.
It imagines tomorrow,
Yet life is not.
Has only ever been lived.
Not as an idea,
Not as a philosophy.
But as a direct experience.
Every smile has happened here.
Every tear has happened here.
Every sunrise,
Every goodbye.
Every beginning and every ending all appear here.
As now.
Perhaps what is troubled is not life itself,
But thought.
Thought moves effortlessly through time.
It revisits the past.
It rehearses the future.
It compares.
It imagines.
It searches.
And in doing so,
It creates the feeling that one is always on the way to somewhere else.
To a better life.
A better version of themselves.
A future moment where everything will finally be complete.
But life has never been waiting for the next moment.
It has never postponed itself.
It has always been completely available.
This doesn't mean we stop making plans or remembering them.
What has been.
They simply mean to begin to recognise.
Where those plans,
Those memories actually appear.
It is always.
Perhaps this is why there can be such peace in simply stopping,
In slowing down.
Not because anything has changed,
But because the movement of searching,
Seeking has changed.
Has come to rest.
Nothing new has been found.
Only what has never been absent.
Is recognised.
You have never been separate from life.
You have never stepped aside from this presence.
You have never been anywhere else.
Always here.
Thank you for being here,
For sharing this moment together.
And until next time.
Be gentle with yourself and simply rest here as life.
Exactly as it is.
If this contemplation has resonated with you,
You're very warmly welcome to explore.
The rest of this growing collection.
Each is another way,
Another pointing.
To the same self-recognition.
