It is an evolving experience, and each day is a little different. This morning I was especially aware of how I am beginning to think with my whole body. For me, it is easiest when I am sitting on my cushion. But it is what I experience as my fingers touch the keyboard and when the blueberries burst between my teeth.
My sense of presence, my consciousness, my awareness is no longer such a cerebral event. It extends through my arms, torso and legs. My body has never felt so alive with awareness. Each tiny maple tree that I pull from my diminutive lawn has a feeling that sends a wave of awareness through my whole person. The collection of roots in my hand is a tangled image that I see with more than my glancing eyes.
The more my body becomes involved in awareness, the less I am attentive to the passage of time.
This morning I was conscious of my diminishing grasp of time. My connection with time is becoming less clear, less distinct. I sometimes wonder if I am becoming cognitively impaired. Is this a sign of creeping dementia. I may be losing my grip on reality and slipping into a realm of lessened cognitive order. I take some solace in my ability to be aware of this experience and reflect on it, but still I’m not sure.
I would like it if all this means that I am beginning to get a better awareness of what it means to be immersed in the un-anchored now. It is inviting to be so totally absorbed in what is happening that my growing sense of awareness is all embracing and my connection with time is fading.
I am thinking these days about a relationship I had with someone in my younger days, and how I was so inept at entering into the present moment. I could hardly see what was before my eyes, and could scarcely absorb the moment. And that moment passed with minimal engagement by me.
This memory reminds me that there is no more important moment than now. My desire is to embrace that moment without hesitation, without holding back, with complete vulnerability and transparency. I see that I have begun to do that more and more. I am beginning to understand what it feels like, and a little about how to do it. I also think it must look a little crazy.
I am deliberately stepping out of a reality most humans around me have created and in which they live. I am in a way becoming disengaged from what others consider the real world. I am aware this must look a little crazy, disconnected, out of touch. I sometimes wonder about it myself.
The more I become able to be immersed in the now, the more I feel I am stepping out of the common reality. I am convinced that things are not what they seem. More importantly, I have begun to experience a different kind of world. It is an alternate reality.
I only hope I’m not actually going crazy. The looking glass is a two-way mirror, and I am stepping beyond the typical reflections into something different. I’m not about to step back.