The Illusion of Progress

You’re not behind. You’re not ahead. You’re not stuck. You’re just here.

But here doesn’t feel like enough. Because we’ve been taught to measure everything: growth, healing, success, even presence.

We want to know how far we’ve come.

How close we are to arrival.

How much better we’re doing than before.

Zen doesn’t care about your progress report.

Zen asks: Are you awake right now? Not yesterday. Not someday. Now.

You don’t need to get better at meditating. You don’t need to become more spiritual. You don’t need to reach some final version of yourself.You are not a project.

You are.not perfext You are a presence.

Progress is a trap. Not because change isn’t possible, But because the obsession with progress keeps us one step away from our own life.

We chase peace instead of sitting down in silence. We chase clarity instead of listening to confusion. We chase freedom instead of feeling what binds us.

But the Dharma isn’t waiting at the finish line. It’s sitting beside you already.

The path doesn’t lead away from where you are. The path begins where your feet are now.There is no better version of you waiting around the corner. There is only this version.

Raw, tired, beautiful, distracted.

Practicing right now.

No future you will ever be more worthy of peace than this one.

So stop reaching. Stop grading yourself.

Just sit. Just breathe. Just stay.

You are not here to improve. You are here to remember.

Not how far you’ve come,  But how close you already are.

Zen is not a climb. It’s a return.

No step forward. Just step deeper.

Here. Now.