The world as we know it is not real but remembered. It is memory. Who you think you are, is not essentially real, but remembered and accepted moment by moment. We mainly suffer from memory and mental assumptions, and not reality. When you sleep at night, the world sleeps with you, there is no suffering and stories in deep sleep, yet your sense of being remains.

Upon waking, immediately, there is only the sense of BEING or I AM without conditioning. And then memory sets in and the world as it is known to you is remembered, and picked up, along with all its problems, identities, and associations. You wear all the identities, problems, resentments, and judgments again as you do your physical clothes.

Memory does not exist in the NOW

If you didn’t attach your sense of I AM to what you remember you wouldn’t suffer. If you chose not to carry these mental burdens, and simply be in the NOW with innocent perception and observation, you wouldn’t suffer. Problems only live in the mind, not reality. Reality is always perfect without the stories we tell ourselves.

Like Jesus says in a course in miracles lesson one “nothing I see means anything”. Things are given meaning in the factory of mind. Without the meaning given, the story dissolves and suffering (anger, worry, panic, tension, anxiety, depression, envy, etc.) ceases.

You can choose to restore your innocent vision. Your true self is I AM, or BEING. You can make the choice to simply BE, without attaching all these judgments to reality. Byron Katie says “I am a lover of what is”. That is bliss. Just Be. Accept what is, without the lens of suffering, without the stories, and everything will look very different.

You can observe reality as you would picture across a screen. By taking on the detached observer role you deny things your life-giving power.

The power of being a neutral observer comes from not attaching your FEELINGS to what is observed. Without feeling, there is no reality because things are not really true for you. They are witnessed but not believed or given any particular meaning. This robs them of their power and their continued manifestation in your reality ceases. Attaching meaning and feeling to things transforms them into a belief that will then will continue to manifest. That is how reality gets created.

We suffer only memory (past), and imagination (future). Even imagination is a product of memory. What we imagine is usually influenced by past experiences.

**By Mwendwa Mbaabu

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