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I'm afraid it was a bit of black humor. Because if you take the phrase literally, then this is a dead person; if a little metaphorically , then this is a vegetable in a coma,and thus also not quite a person.
A happy person is one who is at peace with his past, is actively involved in life in the present and has realizable goals in the future.
A creature that thinks only “in the present” is, unfortunately, not a person, but an animal. The nature of man is precisely that our mind allows us to navigate in time, and to abandon this achievement of evolution for the sake of bestial ” happiness here-and-now “(read – the absence of memories and plans), perhaps, is real madness.
Ramil, such a statement is not intended for the general public. The average person simply cannot understand this phrase as intended.
By “emptiness” in the head is meant in this case the absence of continuous and mostly negative internal dialogue with yourself about yourself, which occurs in most people.
You can Google default mode network – this is a whole system of neural networks responsible for”mumbling in your head”.
So, there are ways, starting from ” substances “and ending with special meditation techniques that allow this system to be” knocked out”, temporarily or permanently. This will not mean that a person loses the ability to remember the past or plan for the future – other parts of the brain are responsible for these functions.
This will mean that the person will banally have fewer “non-productive thoughts” – not related to business, planning, problem solving, etc. These are all those thoughts about how you were unfairly treated, your fears, your worries, your rejection, judgment, your opinion of yourself, about others, your ideas, limiting beliefs and other neurotic thoughts.
Given that most of the thoughts that the average person experiences during the day belong to the “unproductive category”, when this default mode network stops working, or at least starts working with less intensity, subjectively it can be experienced as “emptiness in the head”. And it is accompanied by a deep sense of inner peace and a sense of flow.
In fact, when a person experiences happiness, he just experiences a temporary cessation of the flow of his anxious thoughts, until they begin to arise again, when ” life takes its course.”
As for the past and the future, here again, you need to be careful in your statements. All fears relate to the future, and all resentments relate to the past. Therefore, if a person simultaneously stops thinking processes that include replaying fears, anxieties, jealousies, resentments, anger, etc., then it may seem, at least at first, that “the past has disappeared” and “the future has disappeared.” But this does not mean that a person turns into a weak-willed plant. It's just that his mind doesn't automatically turn to the past or the future anymore, if it's not necessary (for work, for example).
And in fact, a person does not “not think about the past and future”, but rather “thinks about the past and future much less often, and when it is necessary”, and the rest of the time is in the moment and in the flow, which, as a rule, only increases his personal effectiveness, given that the person no longer spends so much emotional energy on unnecessary thoughts.
I hope that I was able to clarify this at least to some extent. It's hard to put it all into words. And if you try to convey it in one sentence, you get sentences from the category that you are asking about. Unfortunately, the description is not a map…
I wish you success and all the best in life without any hard feelings!
Alexander
Some spiritual teachers do suggest living in the “here and now”, but they do not mean that there are no memories or forecasts, but rather that you focus emotionally on the “now” moment for a cleaner and more adequate perception of the situation and subsequent action. Because some negative emotions that come from focusing on the past or the future can be very harmful in the present.
The void is like a white sheet, untouched by the artist. There is no place for happiness or unhappiness. there is nothing there yet – this is the beginning. How to fill it out is your choice.
What is even more important is to learn to return to this beginning, then there will be no fear of creating and the understanding will come that the most important creation is emptiness.
Not all people understand that Emptiness, according to Buddhism, is understood as the Primary Essence. In Buddhism, Emptiness – – – is 1, that from which everything else has emerged and that to which All ESSENCE aspires!!! The human mind is a mechanism that, all the time, brings a person into non-reality. This is his main task! The Buddha said: “In the mind there is no mind, there is a bright light.” A person should understand that the Past, Future and Present exist in one. This is “alive here and now.” Is it possible to achieve such a state? Yes, you can and it's simple – – – you need to sit in the lotus position and meditate. If you practice for a long time, you will reach the state of “happy person.” I wish you success in achieving this state. With respect.
Let's start with your last question.
What is the past, if not thoughts about the past, Your thoughts about what happened in the “past” just for you.
For me, other events took place in the same “past”.
That is, it was the past, but for everyone it is different.
Thinking about the “past” is an illusion, although I agree with you, if you show me an object that “appeared” in the “past”, for example, a built building, a photograph, and so on, I agree with your past.
But what's the use of “thinking” about it? What can this” thinking ” do for you?
Yes, nothing but a bad mood, because you can always find something that could be “fixed”…
However, “correcting” what passed at the very MOMENT when it was happening would change your present, and perhaps the opposite.
Thinking about the future is certainly useful if this thinking refers to thinking about upcoming actions, that is, about achieving a certain goal! This is very good “thinking”.
But aren't we more often visited by “dreams”? A certain something that we would like, but how we would “like” it, when we would “like” it, and whether we would like it at all, remains a kind of secret dream.
Thinking about it is also an illusion and only sets the stage for dissatisfaction with yourself and not only with yourself in the future.
However, not thinking about the past and the future is almost impossible for any of the people.
BUT!
If you are acting now, doing something, then there is no thinking about the past or the future at this MOMENT, because there is only the action of this MOMENT.
This is the very MOMENT that divides our Lives into the “past”and the” future.”
Now about the “emptiness in the head” and about happiness.
Such a concept simply cannot be – “empty head”, because the language in which we think, the actions that we do, our culture and so on, our Mind takes from the “past”, so we can not completely disconnect from the past.
Just as we can't help but think about the future.
Yes, this is not really important, because a person can be happy only if he does not harm himself.
What is not harmful?
A few examples – do not envy, do not judge, do not put yourself above others, do not get angry at others, do not flatter, do not lie, and so on.
With this set, a person cannot be happy, either with an empty head or with a full one.
In this case, we mean one of the forms of happiness, which consists in ignorance.
Just as Adam and Eve were happy until they learned the “truth,” so there are people who would rather live in a sweet lie than learn the bitter truth.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
People are more than complex.
You can think about the past and understand that you have not lived your life in vain, your life was bright – you will experience happiness. You can think about the past, and understand that you have lived a useless life – you will suffer. Or perhaps your values lie outside the category of “living your life well”, and you, for example, will experience suffering due to the fact that you spend time on something that you can not change (thoughts about the past, I mean). Or maybe you have organic brain damage, and you always experience happiness or suffering.
I'm just writing this to show that an accurate answer to such a question must take into account a huge number of variables. So huge that it would be a crime for a mere mortal to answer such a question categorically, and here it is rather worth answering with probabilities, and the answer (or rather the question itself) should contain variables to reduce the likelihood of misunderstanding.
People who understand this usually do not ask or answer such questions.
This is my answer to most of the questions on this site.
Better an “empty” head than a pile of thoughts about the deceased past, which give rise to regrets, and thoughts about the illusory future, which give rise to fears of uncertainty. Independence from these thoughts will give you freedom and purity of thought. You live in the present moment, but thoughts in the past, even if they are directed to the future, the mind simply processes the information received earlier.
We were all deceived by Descartes with his ” I think, therefore I exist.” 🙂 We are used to thinking that our thought process is us.
Think about this: the only moment where you are alive is now. The past is gone. There are only memories. There is no future yet. There are only plans for the future.
And the saddest thing is that you can't change the past, and the future usually turns out to be anything but what you imagined. And when that future arrives, where will you be? You will again mentally invent some new improved future for yourself, or remember the past. And so on all my life.�
I advise you to read Eckhart Tolle's book “The Power of the Moment Now”on this topic.�
You can get at least a little closer to full awareness through meditation. The main thing is not to get hung up on it, waiting for “well, when will it work”. Otherwise it will be a step forward and two steps back 🙂
Steve Jobs on the benefits of Meditation:
“If you just sit down and watch yourself, you will see how anxious your mind is. Try to calm him down, and it will only get worse. But over time, the mind will calm down, and when it does, more subtle things will become available to you. Then your intuition will kick in, you'll start seeing things more clearly, and you'll be able to be more present. Your mind will slow down and the vast expanses of the now state will open up before you. You'll see a lot more than you've seen before.” If Jobs hadn't been into meditation, we probably wouldn't know what an iPhone is right now 🙂
Famous filmmaker David Lynch has created a whole foundation to promote meditation: https://hydraweb.ru/david_lynch_meditation/ and wrote a book about it.
Andy Paddicombe, creator of the popular meditation app, teaches these techniques to oligarchs and top managers: https://snob.ru/entry/161045
In general, everything is in your hands-here and now 🙂
I guarantee that if you manage to master this “emptiness in your head”, then compared to you-today you will be fucking happy.
Although if you are 100% honest, then you will always be “just” happy, and whether you will be happy or not depends on the amount of love in your life, on the amount of inspiration in your life, and a couple of other things can provoke bouts of happiness.
But the problem is that “emptiness in the head” is very simple (no kidding, this is really a very simple thing), but it is difficult to achieve.
Something like “lift a 100-kilogram barbell”: there are no tricks in this, and you can lift it in principle, but you will have to train unrealistically much.
That's not the point at all.
It just happens that thinking about the future is a little pointless. There is a constructive way: this is to do something in the present (including in order to get something in the future), and for this you have to think about the present.
As for the past,it can't be changed. It is possible and necessary to remember it, but there is no need to think about it.
These are children, from 1 year to 2.5 years old. Of course they are happy. They do not yet know how to think about the future and the past. They are attentive and on guard. They are alarmed and frightened by everything new. But something familiar, native makes them happy as puppies, a familiar, warm and safe island in the sea of the unknown. Thinking about the future is taught to them by adults who are used to just thinking about it, which, in other ways, only makes us unhappy, who value their mostly empty experience. We teach them the horror stories of the future – “if you….., then later…..” and recall the mistakes of the past – ” do you remember….?” Children, of course, resist us with their fantasies, but adults every time, trying to make them adults – themselves, let them down on our sinful earth, describing what will happen to them later if they do not do this or do this because it has already happened. But when we find ourselves in nature and / or a beautiful place, we no longer think about the past or the future, we revel in the surrounding beauty, we are happy here and now, we feel free, we are ready to commit madness, stay here forever, but remembering what awaits us and how we are without it, makes our happiness fleeting. Happiness is in everyone's head if it doesn't care about memories of the past or thoughts of a difficult future. But such people are not accepted into the social society, but are kept separately, and they will never be taken seriously.