Mantra by Zachary Phillips.
Be present,
For now is all that exists.
Grow,
Enjoy,
And act morally.
Drop your ego,
Listen,
Empathize,
And forgive.
Trust your intuition and be compassionate.
Nothing more is within your control.
Let it go in just feel.
Accept yourself.
The present moment,
Right now,
Really is all that exists.
The past,
Whilst it happened,
And whilst it impacts us,
No longer exists.
Other than in the memory trace that is left upon our minds.
And equally,
The future doesn't exist.
Other than the blood of anxiety that we get when we contemplate it.
Really,
Right now,
This moment is all.
It's all that exists,
Because nothing else can.
Life seems to be a sequence of connected present moments.
Just one,
After the other,
After the other,
After the other.
So in this piece,
I hope to suggest a path to being present.
One that will help us to live in the present moment.
And the first part of that path is to remind ourselves that now is all that exists.
Be present,
For now is all that exists.
Grow,
Enjoy,
And act morally.
Drop your ego.
Listen,
Empathize,
And forgive.
Trust your intuition and be compassionate.
Nothing more is within your control.
Let it go in just feel.
Accept yourself.
So then the question becomes,
How to do it?
How do we actually live in the moment?
To grow,
To enjoy,
To act morally?
We need to push for self-development.
To grow ourselves physically,
Spiritually,
And mentally.
We need to balance that growth with enjoyment.
You know,
Like enjoying the small things in life.
The warm kiss of the sun.
The smile of a child.
Or the taste of chocolate.
We need to be.
To play.
To enjoy these moments.
But we have to balance that by also acting morally.
Treating others as we would like to be treated.
Thinking of something beyond our mere pleasure.
To make the world a better place.
To do that,
We need to empathize.
We need to forgive.
We need to empathize with the wants and the needs and the desires and the expectations and experiences of other people.
We need to forgive them for their faults and hope that they will forgive us for our faults,
As we should forgive ourselves.
Because nobody's perfect.
This comes through deep listening and through dropping our ego and through acknowledging that at our core,
We are made by the same hand.
Made by the same processes.
We need to trust our intuition and be compassionate.
We have this innate ability in our brains,
Our souls,
To look at a wealth of information and come to a decision very quickly.
And oftentimes that decision is correct.
And if we learn to trust and listen to that voice,
Good things often arise.
And as a part of that,
We want to be compassionate.
And that extends upon the forgiveness aspect,
But also into giving people the benefit of the doubt.
If you walk through life and take every potential slight and grievance and tonality and interaction as a negative,
As an affront,
Or an attack,
You're going to be quite miserable and you're going to be quite miserable.
But if you instead look at all the interactions,
Every unknown,
Every possibility,
Every time where it could go either way,
And you just assume the best of people,
That there's been a misunderstanding,
Or that something is going on in their life that you don't understand,
Things will turn out pretty good.
Because you'll find that the vast majority of people are now nice and that your smiles are reflected by their smiles,
Just as your mood is reflected by theirs.
Then this piece is finished with the concept that nothing more is within your control.
Because in reality,
Nothing more is in your control other than what you can do,
Other than how you respond to things.
And that's okay.
And that feeling itself should be felt and let go of.
We need to accept what's going on in life,
To feel it,
And then to let go,
And to live in the present.
To feel reality.
To accept reality as it is,
And to accept ourselves as we are.
Be present,
For now is all that exists.
Grow,
Enjoy,
And act morally.
Drop your ego,
Listen,
Empathize and forgive.
Trust your intuition and be compassionate.
Nothing more is within your control.
Let it go and just feel.
Accept yourself.
