Focus

It helps to be conscious of our goal here. The ego loves to abuse our thinking minds to distract all of us.

Everyone has their own pet distractions. For me the number one distraction is scheduling. I tell myself what I am doing is useful - that I am planning for future joy, but really the idea that I can independently plan on a calendar how and when I'll allow myself bliss is ridiculous. It feeds my need to feel in control, and leads to hours upon hours of scribbling dates, making plane reservations, canceling those reservations, organizing e-mails and writing notebooks, setting up when such and such is going to happen.

Movement toward truth doesn't happen that way - it is a synergistic flow that occurs when we let go into the the larger plan, life, instead of trying to force it.

It's a comfort to know that when the scheduling bug bites I am on the edge of true fulfillment; the planning is the ego's way of saying, "Hey, you need me!" The ego knows when we're about to slide into bliss and dump it, so it screams like an angry, spoiled child, putting out a smoke screen about this future that will never arrive.

My second mental distraction from Truth is to create false drama. This one is really evil because it takes interactions with other people that are based on love and perverts them into a conflict. Drama is the way the ego destroys love - the love that is the goal in the present where the ego cannot exist!

The way to get past these distractions is to remember that goal, and instead of deciding to plan when we'll get to it later, to turn to it with a sense of peaceful surrender right here, right now.