On our inability to remain mindful and present, on why a flood of thoughts constantly pulls our attention away from the present moment, now, and into that all too familiar world of internal dialogues and inner fantasy:

“… Why do people love music, films or any old entertainment for that matter? Why are street-side cafés filled with people chatting away their lives? Or, to take the opposite scenario, why do prisoners go mad in the silence and solitude of solitary confinement? Because alone, you have no ‘proof’ that you exist. It feels a little too much like death. Without feedback from someone or something, you are nothing. Behind all the art, music is simply feedback. Beneath each exchange of words and ideas, conversation is simply feedback. Some people, so-called masochists, even enjoy physical pain for the same reason – as much as society may write them off as being ‘disturbed’ or ‘perverted.’ But really, what’s the difference in the end? So too, the stream of chatter and random images emanating from within your mind is simply feedback. You make up stories to fill the empty space. It is the constant reminder that you exist. And yet, because the source of this noise lies within the mind, it lacks the external confirmation you crave. Its validity will always remain in doubt to a degree. And so the mind can only continue on: doggedly, desperately generating more and more feedback to try and fill the silence…

To experience yourself in a continual flow now, you have to trust and believe that you really are here – and that you really are to begin with. The moment you question yourself, the moment you begin to doubt, you lose presence. You fall from the sky. For now really is like the sky: infinitely expansive, if you are able to surrender to it with all your heart.

For the time being, though, most of us are stuck in a Catch 22: a ‘devil’s circle’ as many Europeans so aptly name it. In order to permanently remain now, you must free yourself from that primal fear: the fear of your own end, the fear that, ultimately, you don’t exist. The only possible solution can lie in personally experiencing your underlying infinite nature: the undeniable proof that you do exist. But how can you fully let go of the fear of death until you already possess that same first-hand knowledge of the infinite? It all feels frustratingly beyond reach…

This dilemma will provide a focal point in the following chapters. For now, at least, perhaps it’s enough to suggest that this process is less of an endless devil’s circle and more of a sacred spiral: gradually circling towards the centre, towards that One point where you experience greater truth.”