Lesson from the Spirit

We sat on a bench squeezed between two straight green trees. Then the Spirit stood opposite me and said that the tree to my left is my past, and the one on the right is the future.

“You are pinched between your past and your future in your anxieties. But what are you doing in the present?”
“Sitting.”
“You should be walking.”
“Where to?”
“You miss much by assuming there is only past and future. But your time is the present, the time you govern. Many of you keep sitting and doing nothing. What is wisdom?”
“I don’t know.”
“Wisdom is development, wisdom is knowledge, it is inquiry.
Do not sit on a bench squeezed between the anxieties of the past and the coming future. There is the moment here and now, and this moment is your time to act.”
“Why can’t one sit on the bench?”
“You may, but then you miss the essence of what is happening, the essence of the moment here and now. This time is the only one available in your dimension, and you do not use it. You look back and glance at the future with fear. You must step out of that pinched state to meet the knowledge of the world around you.”
“What will that give?”
“It will give you the opportunity to find roads that bypass your present to glimpse the future and recall the past. If you continue to sit on that bench, you will know only the past. If you stand and begin to explore the world around you, explore yourself, you will attain sacred knowledge. Seek paths for the development of your consciousness, allow this to happen so you can learn to direct processes.”
“What processes?”
“Temporal ones. By the roads of self-knowledge you build, you can look into the future, see the past. You will be able to widen the limits of your understanding and perception of the whole world. For the world is not a bench squeezed between two trees. The world is everything that lies around this place; the world is everything that lies within you. It is far greater than you have allowed yourself to imagine.”