14. How to live with more presence and stop ruminating about “what ifs”: a guide to better co-creation 

Once you take the vows and forget who you were in the past, then your existence begins in a human reality. Remembering would make it impossible, because the human brain can’t understand the images and the meanings, yet there is a lingering of memories, sensations, strange feelings that cannot be persuaded to go away. Sometimes you feel a misstep is about to be taken by yourself or another and you create this illusion that things would be completely different if you had done this or that differently. You become desperate, because a different outcome would change so much. And then you stick to a moment in time reviewing again and again what could have been so different in a conversation or an action, forgetting that whatever you have been clinging on, is part of a greater conjunction of events, people, surroundings, places that had their own laws to abide by and belief systems that ruled the collective view on things. 

Every action, every thinking pattern a person has in this world, is molded by the environment, not only their free will. The absence of free will is also an illusion, each and every soul is responsible for a path and a judgment, but not necessarily as much as guilt tells. If you had made that choice in another culture, in another historical time, would it have been the same? It would not, small details can change the course of your actions. The environment pushes, permits or forbids, and your mind, drenched in oblivion, accepts that within that frame of reality, you have these many possibilities. This way, free will exists between options limited by the surroundings. A, B and C, but sometimes you wonder why you didn’t take route D and oppressive regrets come to become an obsession. 

If you allow your reality to play out how it is possible to play, then your expectations are more grounded in the real possibilities you have. You might become kinder to yourself, while taking responsibility for your actions, a middle ground can be achieved in order for you to fasten your ability to achieve the knowledge on how to monitor your decision in a productive way in future decisions. Be it as it may, your future will be expecting new decisions and interactions will be challenging your patience, your strength and resolve. You can’t stay so focused on the past that the present is becoming the past while you don’t pay attention to it. Despising the present because it is not what was meant to be. “What if I had made that other choice, then I wouldn’t be here dealing with this”, that is a coward’s way out of dealing with what is in front of you. 

If you linger, lost in thoughts of what might have been, you would be doing the same in any circumstances, because this is about a posture facing life, this is escapism, and the possibilities brewing in your old patterns of behaviors are nothing but fantasizing about death. When you reject the present, you become dead inside, it is a scary thing to not be present, if there is “no one there” while you are living here and now, then you are not alive. You might think this exercise of imagining what could have been is conscientious, it is not about becoming a better person if you neglect the future that can only be based on the real present. “What ifs” can’t build you anything but an empty life. No excuses will bash the tormented thoughts away. 

Face the reality of your thoughts, have you been stuck in the past? Have you been mourning what ifs? Then it is time to wake up to the present and check really carefully what are the consequences of your absences in the here and now. Because you live with responsibilities and are surrounded by others who expect and need you to be present. If this message is for you, you know exactly what I am referring to. How many times have you been absent lately because your mind was wondering about future “what ifs” that are not connected to the reality of the present? There is not a “what if” that might take place based on a past that is long gone. Face the present if you wish for a more fulfilling and abundant life, there is no other way. It was never as simple as making that option D work, and that is hard to accept, that certain options were never available. That our free will only goes as far as life allows. 

These meditations on what you wish to be from now on only make sense if you believe in the right miracles. That meaning, it has to be accurately founded on how the present moment is designed, never in a possible dream that never came to fruition. Wanting to co-create is a confusing exercise if your thoughts are stuck in the past or if you are judging the present as a horrible thing that should’ve never happened. If the present is not what it should be, what does it tell your entire system about a future? The wiring of fantasies about the past invades your projections of what you want, the present is inhabited by no one, and then what happens next is not what you wanted, because the whole creation made no sense. 

Children are more clear oftentimes, they sit and cry over what went against their will and they might simply kick the bad chair that bumped against their leg and move on. Children don’t resent destiny so often, they let the anger out, cry a good cry and name the thing that was bad. Not all unfortunate things that happened in your life were in your control, you are imbued in this guilt and there needs to be a realization that countenance of the environment plays a bigger role than anyone desires. Controlling the variables would make you powerful, yet, many of those variables are out of reach. What was in your power, in actuality, back then? Not as much as your pervasive thoughts let you believe. Because once you see, you feel powerless, vulnerable. Accepting what was is in part dealing with responsibility, but it is in part accepting that life has a direction of its own. 

If the past was not entirely in your control, you let go of guilt, therefore, the illusion that you can build a future as you please as well. Guilt is a powerful feeling, there is a secret hope that you are more in control of your destiny than you actually are. If you let go of the past, in a way, you let go of controlling the future, and then, what becomes of escaping the present? What if your wishes for the future are not realistic enough, because you want precisely things that are not aligned with the present? It will swirl and swirl for ever until you realize that being present with whatever is happening right here, right now, is demanded in your experience. You went into oblivion before this life for a reason. 

We all forget who we were before starting a new life so we can be present. Some people remember certain things, but no one remembers everything all the time, it would be dysfunctional. Lessons from the past are useful only to guide us through the present, we don’t need all the library of knowledge to eat a meal, we need some specific things. Once you find love of some type, you need that information to surface in a way, what to do, what not to do, what works best, what doesn’t… it is downloaded in your memory at that moment, how best friends work better, how dating used to work better. In any case, the information will be updated by the present events and new lessons will be imprinted in the love knowledge collection. 

When you are fully present in your body, you feel the breathing going deeper, your senses become alive. You can actually see what you have to see. What if you don’t like what you see? Then you must deal with your expectations versus reality, it is what it is. They are who they are and you are who you are, and where you are. Magical thinking won't make it more spicy or colorful, however, gratitude might make everything lighter for sure. Gratitude is the antidote for absence, for being dead while living. It is not so easy to be grateful, not so colorful, sometimes it can require an intellectual gymnastics, what to be thankful for is subjective and again, floating in escapisms is a delightful trap that leads to undoing. 

Gratitude is also a reality check in a different way, appreciation would be a good way to start. From the beginning of your day, you may acknowledge that you are still alive, that is a thing, naming it instead of absently flowing into a day of foggy nothingness. “I am alive”, name it! It might seem small, but it is a great way to wake up for real instead of slumbering through your activities. Then you breathe, and name it, because the real dead ones do not. And you name all the things you do until you go to sleep. It is a challenge, do it for a day or two. Reality is in front of you, requesting your presence.

Now imagine the good moments being brighter, the love you do have, feeling more intense, you will need to learn to be present to appreciate the good things in your life, even small things can bring joy to those who are present. Absence takes away the palate, for example. Only absent people overeat to the point of having stomach pains after a meal. Unless you are present, a hug goes by you and you don’t even register, or a compliment. And the challenges also go unattended properly, which makes them strong candidates for rumination. What a cycle. If you are really present during the difficulties, you face them as best as you possibly can and then you let go, because your consciousness will have registered all of its imperfections.

Learning the lesson contained in a moment of imperfection that was fully lived, is easier, you can analyze the data and move on faster, because you actually have all of it. One thing that keeps people stuck in the past, is that in that past, they were also not present, so they need to fill in many gaps and the entire memory is corrupted. Basically, if you are living in the past, it means you were probably not very present in there as well. People who ruminate too much, might actually be filling in gaps, anguished by those absent moments, they jump into fantasizing and assuming, and that is one of the reasons why there could have been so many possibilities. Endless, futile work. 

Those who are fully present at all times, don’t leave much to be imagined, the past was as it was, you sit with it, review the lessons and move on, because the present being concrete, takes your energy back to what you need to fix, enjoy, watch, taste, right now. And then the past becomes a source of knowledge and wisdom, good and bad memories maybe, but it is not filled with painful question marks screaming in your head. Today is tomorrow’s past. What if yesterday could be in peace, because you were actually there and there are not many gaps to fill in? How well resolved is that what happened yesterday was what truly happened? Allow yourself to be intense in what you feel, at least you will know how you felt in the situation, and then your actions will be decided from a well informed place. 

A compass, the body, the here and now, will feel like finally owning a compass. The future is not going to be your only hope, because those who actually have an idea of the direction they want to follow are not in such a hurry that they overstep and drop everything, then stumble, then turn left and right. They know North is over there, one step at a time is all they have. If the path has mountains, they walk accordingly. If the path is going to cross a river, they plan for a river and cross the river. The map needs to be held in the present in order to reach the other side. It is easier to know where you want to go and how to get there, the possibilities, if you have a map and a compass. You are the compass, the map is life happening in your generation and historical time.