“One way to make detachment easier is to eliminate the past and future from my thoughts.” (ODAT, 16 November)
A good start with this is to realise that the past and the future are not there. There is only the present. To think about the past and the future is fantasy. One has gone; the other is unfathomable. One has only a few, distorted fragments of the past, and there are incalculable future scenarios. The future cannot be accessed.
A jot of analysis of my past behaviour and thinking is helpful in inventory, in very strictly defined ways, and a jot of planning is indeed required for the future, although reality will come to steamroll through a lot of such ‘wise’ planning, in any case.
There is only the present, yet am I really there for that, or I am there only for the tumbling thoughts produced constantly by the physical brain?
It turns out, most of the time I’m nowhere, no-when, in a place outside time and space, surrounded only by past, repetitive thoughts, constantly recycling themselves and plastering themselves on the present, masquerading as responses to it.
This is why detachment is so important. Yes from others. But mostly from the pointless output of the brain.
Then I can contact reality and God.