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How to live in the present using the compass within

To understand how significant the 'present moment' is, it is important to understand the concept of “time”.

My understanding: Time is a limited resource and it must be 'economized' to gain maximum utility just like we use money as a limited resource and try to get the most of out it.

Now the best use of our time has to be time spent in bringing 'harmony' in our lives. This we can do by addressing an issue that has been bothering us for a while such as 'getting a better job' or 'contacting somebody we haven't in a while', etc.

Clearly it should not be too difficult to figure out what these things are because we simply need to focus on what is bothering us.

It is however important to remember that nobody can take on the 'totality of reality' i.e no body can predict the future. Since we don't even know if we will be alive five minutes from now it is best to commit to the 'issue at hand' and resign the outcome and our fate to God. Doing so should make you powerful enough to address 'any' issue.

Once you are clear as to what it is that is going to bring greatest harmony you need to define it in the form of a task and complete it as a task.

Doing this task has to be the “perfect action” because it was the best 'choice' we could have made and we made this choice using our 'conscience'. In fact our 'conscience' is our compass in this life.

I therefore feel that the 'fastest approach' to success in any form: wealth, power, success, tranquility, or nearness to God has to be: being in the moment, listening to our conscience and executing the action like a task.

Often being in the moment might feel like a struggle: the part of a war movie where the enemy is right behind, the person has been running, exhausted he falls to the ground and his friend tears at him: “Move Soldier!”, sound to me much like our prophet speaking to us in the battle field of “Jihad e Akbar”/"Battle with the self".

If you are in the moment and if you stop worrying about the past and the future one of the biggest gifts you will receive is your 'rationalizing' will reduce drastically!

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