Culture of Go

Have you ever noticed that our culture is rooted in the notion that we are going somewhere? How do we know we're going somewhere? Have we ever gotten there? When we arrive, aren't we still right here?

The future is a desperate illusion sustained through notions like "heaven," "progress" and "self-improvement," that help us avoid response-ability to the present moment. The only "progress" that means anything to me is our response to what actually Is.

This Now, with all its messiness and uncertainty, its unresolved threads of cause and effect, is our only possible destination. The inescapability of the present moment is not bondage, but freedom, because here is the only place where we actually feel anything.

Anxiety and anticipation about plans or goals for the future numb us to the ineluctable sanctity of what is. But fully breathing Presence, we dissolve the future into pure alertness, releasing anxiety as free energy that can be used right here with a fearless heart.

Liberation is certainty that there is nowhere else to go. In this here and now we can feel again, feel every atom, because no past or future distracts our attention.

Many will ask, "Then who will bring about human progress, save the environment, end war, promote economic justice?" The answer is: we will, when we abandon the numbness of the future. In the numbness that is our lack of Presence, we unwittingly pollute the earth, exploit the poor, and sustain institutions of violence.

But one who is awake, with true sentience, cannot possibly pollute this breath of air, the heirloom soil in this footprint, this drop of thirst-quenching rain, for she feels each gentle step on earth as an entrance to her ancestral home. One who is awake does not exploit the poor or cling to extraneous wealth. He chooses a simple life for the sake of joy, a life of freely shared abundance. No one needs more than enough when plain necessities are tasted, right down to the marrow, as life-giving sacraments. Nor does an awakened one do violence - to a human, an animal, or the planet. Response-ability to the present moment is the kingdom of God on earth. Here we can love our neighbor as our self, simply because we sense the other as our own body.

In the kingdom of the present moment, we don't need gods or heroes, we just need human beings who are awake.