“Living in the moment” a purposeful misunderstanding.

I remember when I was young, the concept of “living in the moment and for the moment”, was like a battle-cry for doing whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted, and not caring about the outcome or what others thought. It was considered a release from the norms of the 50’s.

That concept continued to grow, until currently, it has become a full blown cry for anarchy, towards anyone “telling a person what to do”. This is simply pure, uncontrolled, teenager mentality. It has spread and infected our whole society, from the individual, to our social attitudes about law and order. Add to this, the idea that everyone is somehow oppressed by those in power. (which is Marxism at its best)., has truly created a society in a constant state of anarchy.

The real issue with this whole mess, is that the original concept of “Living in the moment”, was drawn from monastic traditions, that had very strict parameters and context, for what they meant, when they said these words.

The original concept comes from monastery life, where the monks practised freedom of mind within the confines of a extremely stringent set of rules on their daily life and activities, and governed by their teachers.

What happened when the hippie culture got hold of the concept, was that the rules of the monastic groups it had came from, were to stripped away, removing the necessary context this way of thinking was built in, thereby turning it into something, that suited their lawless purposes.

The impact on society has been on a steady slide downwards since that time.

The truth of Reality is:

We live in two interconnected worlds simultaneously.

• The first, is the world of our mind, and is meant to live and stay free flowing.
  Note: This does not mean the world of our opinions, it means the original mind itself. Even in our mind, we must ride a fine line of freedom, while keeping a structure which can function in society.

And

• The second, is the world of our actions, which must be governed by social standards and guidelines of our society.

The problem with the current way of thinking is that we are confusing the two levels.

Living in the moment, means keeping our mind free flowing, and not limited by social standards, while simultaneously living and acting within the confines of social guidelines the physical world.

When the social guidelines in society are stripped away, and people become confused between our inner world, and the outer world of society, the outcome is a complete breakdown of the very structure that gives us freedom in the first place.

As my father used to say,

“Freedom is tied to responsibility”.

The ultimate purpose of Society is “living together in harmony and respect, and not harming one another”. Laws and guidelines are made to mutually protect this. But unlimited individualism makes these necessary social restraints “oppression by those in power over us.”

The outcome is too blatantly obvious.