Live It Now or It Doesn't Happen
it's always too soon, is the thing
It’s always too soon, is the thing.
No one could reasonably expect you to act like a saint on an overcast Thursday.
No one could reasonably expect you to act from your deeply held Values in a meeting with the sales department.
No one could reasonably expect enlightened behavior of you on the subway.
But you can expect it of yourself.
If you want certain worlds to come into being, you have to expect it of yourself.
I’m writing like a ponce. Let’s try that again.
There’s this fantasy of being transformed in a way that makes it easy to live right. Being reconfigured such that you know what to do and when to do it, and it will all just flow from the divine light within you.
That’s not gonna happen.
Kundalini awakening won’t make you a new person over summer break. There’s no magic to it, all it does is shove force at the weak points in your system to shatter them, so you have to actually deal with them. You have all the same problems and foibles — now they’ll just kill you unless you work on them.
So you work on them.
That’s the whole thing.
There’s not some magical collective awakening coming that will make everyone treat each other with love and kindness. The Shift™ isn’t out there on the horizon. We’re not migrating to Higher Awareness™.
The only thing that might happen is that the weak points in our culture get so much energy run through them that we have to actually deal with them. There’s no magic. Just people dealing with a bunch of problems (here, now, not when trumpets sound in the east or the walls come tumbling down), and giving all they’ve got to that process. And doing this not so you can enjoy some new Eden, but just because there’s work to do — and the fact that you can see some of it means that you have to do some of what you see.
There is no Future You™ or Future World™ that’s gonna come along and redeem the present.
The future you is just you right now, plus the choices you make while time passes.
The future world is just the world right now plus whatever we do while time passes.
No rapture is coming. No collective awakening is going to re-map your neurons into a more compassionate shape. You won’t be reborn more generous and kinder after a crystal pyramid emerges from the sea. One year from today, you will be who you’ve decided to be between now and then. One year from today, the world will be what we’ve decided to make it in the year between now and then.
You can be more noble or not. That comes down to what you do today and tomorrow and next Wednesday after lunch. It comes down to what you do when it’s hard, not what you do once you’ve been magically transformed into someone who does the right thing easily, or magically transported to a world where doing the right thing is reliably rewarded. (Right, let’s break that myth explicitly while we’re here: reality has neither the obligation nor the inclination to reliably reward you for doing the right thing. Living right is the reward, learn to love the flavor of it.)
The world can be more wholehearted and genuine or not. That comes down to how we all decide to live day after day, how we decide to treat each other day after day, where we put our time, our energy, our resources day after day.
We can keep sleepwalking into “inevitable” problems we all see coming from a mile away, or we can remember that sometimes agency means using the brakes, or even reversing. (Shocking how many agency worshipers think certain things are inevitable, and all that’s possible is to use the steering wheel.)
That’s it. There’s no magic to this. Or at least no magic that works without this.
You aren’t punished for your sins, but by them.
You aren’t rewarded for your devotion, but by it.
You get there by being there.
Get off the fence, get out of the waiting room.
You live it now, or it doesn’t happen.
Now. Stand up. Live it. Now.
Spot on.