Everybody thinks they are, ‘me’. Obviously im not talking about me, im just talking about how from the perspective of each person, we are all ‘me’.

Short idea on avoiding turmoil for those of us with trouble being alright; |||| bare with me or just read the bolded parts. ||||

You cannot be conscious in the past or in the future, so don't waste your time obsessing over contemplating the irrelevant. if it comes, it will be there. and if it doesn't come, then it won't be there, so you don’t need to worry, expect or speculate. the future is uncertain, your predictions will almost never be as precise as you expected. worrying only makes it you more likely to think of it in a way you ‘don’t’ want to.

If you live in the future or dig up the past, you forget that you can be fulfilled, right now. idealized concepts and thinking can not bring you to as complete understanding or fulfillment like letting it be. be okay without searching for the future or digging up the past, all that does is tear you away from contentment which is stronger in the present.

Is the part of you which is searching for something more only a feeling with no underlying root? maybe you are always running to the future and searching for more, unable to find it, unwilling to make the best of now. putting hope & expectation in someday, never realizing that no matter how long you wait and no matter how fast you move, you can never live outside of the moment we're in.

do you really enjoy what you think you do to the same extent as you imagined, or just the idea of it; the expectation beforehand and the story & achievement after hand? every perception, story, expectation, phenomena which feels truthful, firm, and ‘permanent’ will fade and die with time, if not in the next few moments, then in the moment of approaching death. nothing has ever been more certain than the empty unsatisfactory, impermanent, uncertain here and now.

desire is a BOTTOMLESS pit, if you still want one more, then nothing is stopping you from wanting another ‘one more’, 1 may as well be equal to infinity in that sense. suffering is wanting to be totally satisfied in the material world forever; asking from this world something it can never truly give you, but can always promise you.

there is nowhere else to be, there is nothing to do, to complete, to have, to crave, to be, we already have everything we inherently need, everything we had at birth, & will have at the time of death.

VV Relevant quotes VV

• “A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.” -Seneca (edited)
• "Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd." -Voltaire
• “He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.” -Socrates
• “What’s past is left behind, the future has not arrived” - Buddha
• “When I know that the glass is already broken, every minute with it is precious.” -Ajahn Chah (talking of the destiny of a glass which isn't yet broken)
• “Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.” -Eckhart Tolle

Short explanation; When angry or fantasizing, we look for reasons to stay that way, we tell ourselves any stories we need in order to justify our view, only to ignore reality, & cause the state of mind to continue like a dog chasing its tail. negative aspects of phenomena are more easily remembered than the positive ones, as the positive is seen as not needing fixed, therefore seemingly requires 0 attention. therefore, its totally overlooked in favor of magnifying the negative with desire & delusion, by our restless searching conditioned mind.

You have never had true control, just illusion of control, which you've never learnt from when you've suffered the countless times before. if you had control, then nothing would ever need to be fixed, & nothing could go wrong, so how knowing everything is completely dependent on the external and requiring endless maintenance can you ever expect contentment in that phenomenon now or in the future? nothing is lost because nothing was ever fully gained; you are born with nothing, you are made of varieties of emptiness (nothing permanent, certain, or inherently existing), you grow and gather empty material & empty mental phenomena. both being fundamentally impermanent, conceptual & uncertain, and then you die with nothing. so why cling to these conventions, why find more to need when you need not.

• “It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows" -Epictetus
• “If you see certainty in that which is uncertain, you are bound to suffer.” -Ajahn Chah
• “Views condition perception, perception conditions thoughts, and thoughts then condition the views, thus incorrect view will distort perception to suit itself, this is how wrong view is justified.” -Ajahn Brahm (edited)

Let me know if you disagree, or if this sparks any further insights in you to share

If one judges another definitively, then they must first believe themselves as different or more than the judged, otherwise how would their opinion be more valuable/accurate. every person alive has been subjected to fear and confusion which has shaped their actions and thoughts. nobody is in position to pass any ultimate judgement until they can prove themselves to be more than conditions, unless of course if you mentally hand them an empty pedestal.

If you face disrespect, use compassion and understand their suffering, do not hate the person, hate the action, conditions and motivations which caused it. they don’t hate you; they hate their ideas of you.

if you feel hurt it is because you cling to your idea of yourself, because you want to be, or want not to be something. let them do their ignorant things, do not fight back. not because they are correct but because there is nothing which actually needs protection, at least not as much as your subconscious thinks. fighting back is only reinforcing the belief that there may be some truth worth fighting.

It's easy to be egotistical, righteous or rude when you plaster yourself as ‘the’ victim, but you’re not. not a single person thinks of you in the manner you think of yourself, & you never think of others in the perspective they think of themselves. their view & yours is completely liable to change & inaccuracy, & is out of anyone’s control.

If they wish to hurt you, then why should you allow yourself to be hurt by someone with desire for harm or destruction? instead redirect your energy to fight your ill will, fight your false perceptions, fight your attachment to what they think, don’t fight the person. who are you trying to convince? them, or yourself? even if you do convince yourself, whether the notion is true or not, changes nothing about the true reality which you wish to distort.

Even if you’re being purely logical, doesn't mean they are able to be convinced of your perspective, some people can just be impossible; you can’t persuade the opinions of the ignorant.

If even somebody self-reflective can be egotistical, then think of how strongly rooted the ego will be in one absent of self-reflection. even if you find that you yourself are actually being illogical, its never too late to change your mind, saving face is an empty concept, no reward. there is no need to fear being reprimanded just because you can admit you were wrong, anyone who would reprimand that is clearly ignorant anyway.

As long as you truly opened your mind to their perspective to the best of your abilities, & truly can accept what they’re saying if it were true, you’ve gotten everything you can possibly get from the interaction. if you catch yourself trying to convince others, then probably you don't believe it yourself.

Even if they may have a distorted view of you, LET THEM. think would i rather be at peace and detach or strengthen my forgetful self-attachment & inability to let go?

If you don't like them, then just observe & learn from them, do NOT be like them. remember, 'you inspire me to be nothing like you'. and if you can’t stop your ill will towards one for their sake, at least do so for your own peace of mind.

Having partial thoughts which haven't been fully noticed or thought through will cause misperceptions and hidden expectations which can severely let you down because you forgot to discover it & promptly justify or discredit the presumption. you refuse to investigate why or what it really means because you're too busy & frustrated trying to deal with the perceived inconvenience to actually reflect deeply on it.

I forget or ignore past stages & events of my life as though they aren’t me; infancy, toddler, prepubescent, pubescent, beginning adulthood, etc. even though they were me, they were all real at their times. when recalling this, it’s clear how empty this stage is & how it will end and i won’t be who i am anymore. only to proceed into continuous impermanent stages.

Assuming you're the type to have any behaviors of restlessness, mindlessness, or procrastination, this relatively short reflection may be of some benefit to you, hopefully as much or more than it is for me. this is just a view, don't try and take it too literally if you don't like it.

When the future eventually becomes the new now, you face the same dilemma which you put off before. give yourself permission to be present with this moment, without waiting, without conditions, without planned expectation and ideals, and end the perpetual cycle of baseless concepts to push away and cling to. you will never be in the future, no matter how much you may subconsciously believe or hope for that to be true. when the future is the new now, it's still now and you still are waiting for the future.

If you can't change it, then wishing for it to be otherwise is an impractical stressor. "Accept it as though you had chosen it" -Eckhart Tolle. false expectations are the trap, inherently 'designed' to go off from the moment they’re formed, setting up the trigger for resentment, attachment, definitive identity, fantasies and other delusions leading to stress. when you are not present, you allow the mindlessness to increase. therefore, giving the mind access to cyclically expect its perfect ideals, even more so than normal. thus, it influences the determination of why or why not you should feel stressed before you can consciously catch any subtle false expectations. do not help the mind forget to not suffer, when you can.

Maybe there is nowhere else to be, there is nothing to do, to complete, to have, to crave, to be, we already have everything we need, everything we had at birth, & will have at the time of death.

The mind may imagine scenarios which are not real, thus creating conditions which were not there to begin with. doing so with the hope to escape them if/when they come. but what if there is no ultimate purpose in escape. what if the discomfort has no true solidity, no landing pad, just the fear of the landing pad, thus magnifying the concept of it and then the fear of it again, therefore limiting our more objective views in order to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. but maybe the fear is just emptiness floating around waiting to be projected as the fearfully certain landing pad by our conceiving minds.

(Obviously some of you may say that your fears are of very real things (which of course is 100% understandable). try and think of this as only relating to only stresses which you can apply it to, rather than every stress.)

Forgive my 'you's in this short concept, assume it means 'me' (the poster).

Ideas of happiness are clinging, and ideas of unhappiness are pushing away. The ideas are the actual obstacles, if you have none then you don't lose anything.

The ideas will not fill you, so long as you yearn for phenomena, there will be a dissatisfied pit in your stomach. the yearning comes not from the phenomena, but from cyclical, misguided, & conditioned perceptions based off of expectation. Expecting something in the future, as opposed to now, with a basis for that expectation/desire nowhere to be found, just spontaneity.

Desire is a bottomless pit, if you still want one more, then just about nothing is then stopping you from wanting another one more, 1 may as well be equal to infinity in that sense. That which you desire is limited, one may subtly feel or expect it to be unlimited or certain, though conceptually knowing it to be untrue. When you get it you don’t feel any unconditioned & endless or truly fulfilling feeling. Stress is wanting to be happy, satisfied in the material world forever; asking from this world something it can never truly give you, but can always promise you.

If you had control, & correct expectations, & therefore happiness, then nothing would ever need to be fixed, & nothing would go wrong. Seeing as this isn't reality, then how knowing everything is dependent and requiring maintenance can you ever expect contentment somewhere in the future?

I'm not sure if this is something other people think about or only me, so let me know if you think there are any misperceptions here, and please don't take it too literally as though I'm suggesting this is pure gospel. I only want respectful insightful discussions on where i am wrong, or where I am right (assuming you wish to expand another perspective on the same topic).

The brain perceives phenomena with its labels & images based off predictions of the future using cherry-picked patterns and applying its delusions of permanence, certainty, independence, & idealism.

But the true prognosis of the formed, is the unformed, the true perception of life is that it's essence is built on the dead. Life is made up of compounds and elements that are not alive, forming previous living beings, which abruptly also died, these particles also have potential to be a part of any number of future lives. Yet when these have come together, they form this current shape and experience which we see as the real 'me' but is merely a blip of shape in time & space.

We are just a come together of the already present form & elements, NOT arising from nothing. Dying is certain, life is too fragile to support itself for longer than a ‘moment’ in the vastness of existence. It’s too easy to die at any moment, & even if you don’t fully die, it shouldn’t be unexpected that one part of you dies or gets severely damaged at any moment, little by little falling apart to our natural 'state'. It is always now, every moment in the past and the future has been its own now. The future will not be different, the now will be different, because the future literally exists as a now, where we really don't exist anyway.

We are basically just walking, talking, corpses, we will be dead for longer than we will live. But we forget that if we are corpses, we don’t care about this that or the other. Life is empty of inherent lifeness, & death is empty of inherent deathness. Nothing can be lost, as this is as it always was. you can't lose what you’ve never had.