You and Today Are a Twosome

Heavenletter #3063 Published on: April 14, 2009

God said:

Ignorance is not bliss, but innocence is. Innocent, you are happy. What does innocence mean? It means you are not caught up in the past. It means you look at everything with new eyes, not old. In innocence, your eyes are bright and your face merry.

When away from innocence, you are looking at the past, and in so doing, you are also weighing the future. The past and future exist in your mind. The present isn't really a midpoint between the two. Right now is where you and your mind and thoughts belong. You are receiving a meal right now. Yesterday's supper is over, and tomorrow's has not been made yet. Do you really want an old menu or a future one? You really want to be served in the diner of today.

Would you rather flip through old photos than live today? You can dream the future, yet there are no photos of tomorrow. Of today, of course, you can take pictures, yet you can draw on the slate of life for this moment only. Second by second, this slate is wiped clean.

Today, even in its brevity, is more valuable than yesterday. You may have had gold yesterday, yet it is today that lands in your lap. It is today you mold. The gold of yesterday is no longer pliable. What you have in your hand is today and all it offers you.

The world holds sorrow because it holds attachment to the past. You are attached to what was. Each new day is not meant to be held in hostage to the past nor is each new day meant to be forfeited for tomorrow.

Fresh is better. Fresh cream is better. Fresh butter is better. Fresh from the oven is better. Eat now. The past is already stale. It is no more. Only in your thoughts was there ever a past. What are memories really? They are like bank robbers who rob you of today.

There is not really a today. There is a moment that you parcel out into partitions of time and call a day. Time, of course, does not really exist. Time doesn't even really exist on the recorders of time such as your watch. Your watch knows nothing about time. There is nothing to know.

The past is a still photo. The minute it was taken, what it was taken of has already moved on.

Catching this moment is like catching a butterfly. The butterfly flies away. It moves too fast for you. And when you catch it, it is not a free-flying butterfly any longer. A butterfly caught is immobilized. It is the liveliness of a butterfly in flight that you really want, and that can't be captured, you understand. Certainly a pressed butterfly is of the past and has no liveliness of its own. Let your eyes catch butterflies as they fly past you.

And this is how you catch a day. You don't really catch it. You can only move with it. You follow the sun of the day.

And when it is nighttime, you follow the light of the stars, or you follow the moon, or is it the moon that follows you?

What does it matter all this when you, a vibrant Being, are an offering to the day, the same way the day is offered to you? You and today are a twosome. Dance together as you have never danced before.

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WE AND TODAY AND A TWOSOME

On April 14th, 2009 mary moon (not verified) says:

WHEW! This HL is a riddle and a half! The title of the Letter says WE AND TODAY
ARE A TWOSOME. Yet, You tell us there is no today!! Oh, well, I suppose we
could say, in Truth, we human beings don't exist at all. I somehow I do understand that!
For human beings surely seem dense as all get out! Hmm, I like that "all get out". Get out -all you denseness! "Gladly" says our souls, "we wanted to fly for ever so long!"

Most likely the atom is the source of all of us. Atoms R-US. They are Pure Light. Lovely!
Maybe there's only ONE ATOM! The oneness of the ATOM.

Now, I do love the idea that the moment that just passed is already stale. So, surely looking at my sons' photos as little boys is like looking at leftover sandwiches. Not a great simile.
A captured butterfly, as YOU put it is so much more apt. For it is their liveliness that
I remember with great delight!! And our children are not ours anyway, they belong to YOU!

So, a day is offered to me in great Love. I, a vibrant Being, a radiant Being, offer myself
to the day NOW For tomorrow doesn't exist. I can't wait to dream tonight! Oh, I forgot
tonight is the future, so it's not real! I can't wait to be able to DREAM NOW!

Steps to lost innocence

On April 21st, 2009 Chuck Gebh... says:

I agree wholeheartedly with mary moon that his letter is a riddle and a half. I struggled with this letter. It is obviously quite important, the topic keeps coming back up in other letters and in how we readers react to them. I offer my thoughts on it after puzzling through it.

Do you remember your first day of kindergarten? Do you remember your first day of high school? Weren’t you impressed with the thought of all you would need to learn so that you would be a success in the world? As you we being educated, you learned fact after fact and rule after rule. You memorized conclusions others had come to and written in books. The whole experience of your education was primarily one of internalizing mental patterns that your teachers knew were crucial to your future success.

This letter flies in the face of the unspoken assumptions that lay behind this educational process. It boldly puts forth a very radical proposition: “Right now is where your mind and thoughts belong.” We are told that innocence is bliss. “Innocent, you are happy.” To achieve this innocence we must free ourselves from the past so that we can: “Look at everything with new eyes.” This turns the assumptions of our parents, our teachers and the world’s experts completely upside down. My lord, this is very radical!

The metaphors given in support of these directions are powerful. A butterfly under a plastic cover is so much less pleasing and joyful than watching “the liveliness of a butterfly in flight.” Certainly, also, the memory of the taste of yesterday’s dinner and the imagined taste of tomorrow’s are only a shadow of the aromas and tastes of a meal we are now consuming. Another powerful, implied argument is the realization of how our pre-occupation with events of the past or anxieties about the future can completely destroy our enjoyment of an otherwise delicious meal we are currently eating.

No one would argue that focusing on the past or on the future diminishes our ability to be present with and to enjoy our current experience. But rejecting our entire education and all of our past memories is a huge pill to swallow! Am I over-interpreting this message or over generalizing? I think not. Could this be any more clear? “Only in your thoughts was there ever a past. What are memories really? They are like bank robbers that rob you of today.”

If this letter is correct in what it instructs us, how could so many of us have been so wrong and for so long? Virtually all of recorded history details the efforts of mankind to learn and understand our world and to teach our children what we think we have discovered. The conflict between the message of this letter and the world’s common sense approach to life is mind boggling!

Maybe what I have come up with will be helpful in beginning a dialogue to explore this letter further. Or maybe I am making much to do about nothing. I will present my analysis of the steps our minds take in dealing with our experiences of the material world so that you can judge. Let me start with what I will call the “Steps to lost innocence.”

Step 1. We all begin to experience unpleasant sensations and naturally think uncomfortable thoughts as soon as we arrive on this material plane. We see plants, animals and other people die. We experience pain and suffering. We feel isolation and loneliness. These are all unavoidable and a natural part of life.

Step 2. Our imagination seizes on these experiences and effortlessly, almost automatically, projects versions of these unpleasant sensations into our imagined future. We begin to worry about these possibilities. We wish to avoid as many of them as we can.

Step 3. Just as quickly as we imagine these undesirable possibilities in our future, we begin to develop strategies to protect ourselves from them. Where do we get these strategies? We get them from our past experiences and the past experiences of others. Our parents and teachers also want to protect us and they quite vigorously present their knowledge to us and expect us to internalize it. We all agree on virtually all of these worldly teachings, you could call these assumptions and beliefs “mass consciousness” or “world thought” as some of the Heavenletters do.

Step 4. We internalize these rules and opinions as our personal “truths.” We take these rules and guides completely to heart and they control our lives, with the imagined fears enforcing our compliance.

Final step. Our assumptions and expectations become a dense filter through which we experience the world. We experience the “now” in a state of conditioned expectation that blocks our pure and “innocent” acceptance of the experiences of life which this letter would direct us toward. We also tend to habitually focus on our memories of the past and imaginings of the future, failing to appreciate the magic that the present has to offer in the process.

If these steps are fairly accurate in describing how our fascination with past experiences and imagined futures develops, there are important implications. For one, the process of having our attention diverted from the present to the past and the future is quite natural and compelling, especially so given the current deeply held assumptions of mass consciousness in our world. Another implication is that the steps of this process develop like a row of falling dominoes, the later steps being direct consequences of the previous steps. Stopping any step will halt the sequence. Perhaps the most important implication is that an awareness of Truth will undercut the basis for the earliest steps and, consequently, all the other steps. Loneliness dissolves with the awareness of our oneness. Fear of death and fear of pain diminish or disappear as we become aware of our eternal nature. Once this awareness arises, the fear that drives the anxiety about imagined dangers and the need to focus on the past as a mechanism of protection is dissipated.

How do we make use of these insights? From HL #1175 (Practice Love) comes the following. “As you focus on being an instrument of love, by default, you forget to hold on to the chimeras of the past.” I would add that we also no longer need to hold fast to our illusions of a dangerous future. Further, this letter says: “Embroider in your heart now that you are an embodiment of love. Whatever life calls on you to do now, let love be present.” Our awareness that we are an embodiment of love will bring us fully into the present.