Simple Truths

• Your body and personality have a beginning. But that beginning developed out of the past. The you that emerged, and that you have become today, have its roots in the line of events, past experiences and ancestral heritage stretching back into the ancient past. The moment and experience of your birth stamps you with indelible marks of destiny. It cuts you with injuries, of the moment or from the past. It plants seeds of opportunity, and unfolds countless connections with what has been. From these you will weave a future. Your birth does this in very apparent ways, not at all mysterious. It does these things because of the period of history, the culture, family and circumstances into which you were born. But the mystery and adventure arise from what weakness or strength, ignorance or genius, dignity or violence you bring to the opportunity.

• The past was a moment that occurred in a present that moved on and transformed it. Therefore there is no distant past, except as light and distance make it our present. All that occurred in that long ago moment lie with you now, transformed yet alive within you and around you. Therefore do not look back, because it is all here now as your traits, your responses. Find it in your scars and buried pains, in the wisdom or folly you perpetrate upon yourself and others. See it in the very being you are and way the world and life is around you.

• The future lies germinating in this moment. Unshaped yet tentatively formed out of all that you are, all that is in this moment from the countless befores of your existence. For you are a rolling ball that never moves from this moment, carrying here and now the past and the shadows of the future you are creating. Each move of your head and arms, every heartbeat, with all the multitude of thoughts, passions and fears, fly from their formless world and thunder into existence as events and objectivity. And with art or clumsiness the ball you are bumps and ricochets off meetings and relationships, creating its path through life.

• Nothing is new, and yet everything is new in each moment. The events you meet, and the circumstances you encounter, have lain long as possibilities. And you make them real by your responses and reactions. But the possibilities are endless, and it could have been quite another path you took, quite another love you gave or evaded. Therefore, as each moment has countless possibilities, so there are no concrete goals for you to achieve, only those that lie in you wanting passionately to be reached.