Fallacy of the Future
In colonial society, planning for the future means planning how we will make and spend our money. We even plan our families based on how much money we make. Ironically, our possessions do not come with us when we die but the actions we take to obtain them do.
My childhood was spent in a community where talk of preparing for the future by accumulating material things was non-existent. When I came to the US, I found opposing priorities to the ones back home. Back home no one ever discussed going to college or validating ourselves with the accolades and titles handed out by the system. We lived one day at a time, because we had what we needed for survival. When I realized how things are done here, I felt deprived because I did not fit in. School was presented as a possible equalizer but I did not even have an idea of what I would be going to school for.
I remember someone who came from the US to visit my community and was very surprised at how simply we lived. He said he had never seen people living without worrying about money or doing anything that pertained to saving things for the future. Our future was the continuation of our survival by teaching the children what we knew. Nevertheless, I left home because I was searching for something that I thought I had found when I came to America. All of the lessons of my childhood started to fade as I got more and more caught up into catching up to the way things are done here. It wasn't until I came to the Earth Center that I realized that all my planning for the future (going to college, insurance plans, jobs, and so on), as I came to perceive it, was only a set-up that was making me dependent on this system while distracting me from living in reality or coming to know what I came to Earth for.
I have since learned that those of us who stop trying to run towards the future and take the time to discover the opportunity for growth in each day can gain much. Unfortunately, in this political system where every individual's focus becomes about having "security" based in the accumulation of material things, this value is lost. Every day presents its own challenges that serve to help us grow on our spiritual path. This is why we spiritual initiates choose to take each day as it comes.
Therefore, the idea of the future is a distraction that has been set to prevent us from seeing that we do not control our own lives, thus also "our futures". We get up everyday thinking about what we can do to secure our futures but this thought process takes us directly into servitude, working the ''plantation'' to secure the goals of our colonizers. We go there unwittingly thinking that our gains will in turn allow us to have what is needed for the future, but it never happens. We get nothing! Yet we continue doing the same thing again and again under the assumption that somehow, someway, we will benefit. This is crazy, because if there was something to gain, wouldn't it become more and more apparent along the way?
This is the trap that we are stuck in. We cannot see that the future is based on what we do today, or how this concept applies to every aspect of our lives. Somehow the system tricked us into surrendering our survival for belief. This philosophy of believing has made us the dumbest entities in the existence. Even on our quest for material things we work very hard going to work every day. Everyone knows that if nothing at all is done, then nothing will ever be received; so obviously waiting on belief reaps nothings. However, where it pertains to our culture and values (what's really important) it seems to be acceptable to simply believe in it. Why should anyone continue to work hard and never reap the benefit and why should others do nothing and gain everything? This doesn't make sense! Logic dictates that if one plants a seed and keeps nurturing it, that eventually it will grow and can then be used for food and other resources. This is the same way people can grow by nurturing our human qualities. The material things will not go with us in our graves. This concept of a future secured by material wealth was given to us by those who set up our failure to survive in order to ensure that we would serve them to our graves. If we live focusing on this false future, we will only end up dying for nothing.
"The future is nothing but a trap set to to block our view of the becoming of the thing that transforms everything." This statement by Master Naba Lamoussa Morodenibig speaks to the logic of self destruction. The thing that transforms everything is what presents itself to us every step of our lives. The truth is that we ignore the call to construct our futures by continually being intrigued by what we find inside the trap of the illusion of that future. Consequently, we find all the reasons to justify that what we are doing is necessary and good. The reason we find is that we will have something that will help us in the future. The things we may gain (cars, computers, cellphones, houses) may only help us in this physical life, but this is not where our future ends. The future comes after physical life. And if all we have to say for ourselves then is that we worked for material things, we will have lived and died for nothing. We did not come here to have fun and be comfortable, but to finish the uncompleted work of our own human development . The future never really comes, every time one awakes in the morning it is that day. So, what is done each moment is what counts towards our goals, but in worrying only about what we will have tomorrow, we will never live for today to reach them.
This is the illusion that has been set up very ingeniously to keep us endlessly running around in circles. Everything becomes, nothing can stay the same, so we should ask ourselves what do we want to become? If anyone wishes to become a loser, then they should just keep running in circles and accumulating meaningless things. It is impossible to increase our qualities if we do not work on them. This is why we came to Earth, to take another chance at perfection. Without making the effort to improve, then the life is wasted. Those of us who wish to take our lives seriously can transcend with valuable qualities by remembering to focus on the challenges of each day. I am still working to let go of the things I don't know I am holding on to that were given through the system. My goal is to be ableto stand tall and proud in front of my ancestors when I return home to them.