Author: barryschade@gmail.com

I have been having such a good time exploring how to step out of time.   The more I explore, the more it becomes a real part of me.

This morning I spent ten glorious minutes in a world with no time.   Everything was happening right now, and I was part of it.    I had this deep feeling of what it is to be in the middle of the Big Bang as it happened all around me.   The years of earth development telescoped into an instant.   Everything came together in a breath.

The future did not have a time assigned to it any more than the past.   I got to sit in the middle of an expanded sense that everything is happening right now.

I love stepping out of time and being attentive to everything that is happening right now.   Its is a wide and deep horizon and it is a thrill to be there.

A couple days ago I got to put my fingers against a pillar of natural stone sitting in front of a friends home.   All time was erased and I was there, touching a stone-without-time.   It was all there, the fire, the molten rock, the heat, the cold surface of the stone that always is.    The heaving, the flowing, the sitting still, the constant movement  ……. it was all there, captured in a simple touch.

Everything is in constant change.   While time is the measure I use to keep track of change, the increments are something people have invented.   There is no way to freeze the moment, and “now” is all there is.

All things are in motion, the mountain, the wood of my house, the growing plants.   The land on which I stand is moving.   My bed, out of which I rose  this morning, is in a different place from where it was yesterday morning.    Everything that exists is real because it is in relationship with something else, and that relationship constantly changes.

Nothing is static.   There is no permanence.

So much of my days are devoted to being connected.    It is a joy to be connected to my plants, to my body, to people I see.    This has been such a deep desire in me that it has gotten out of balance from time to time.    Now I know better how to be connected, deeply aware of things just as they are, not as I want or imagine them to be.

It is important for me not to make my experience different from what happens.   I want to accept what is, not resist it, welcome it, be attentive to what is being felt.   I want neither to be controlled nor attempt to control whatever I experience.

Reality is in being connected.   Relationship is reality.

 

I have such an established pattern of rushing to the next moment.   I am looking ahead, where I am going, what I am going to do next, what I intend to get from the other side of the room.   I learned a long time ago that when I am using my bandsaw to cut wood, it is always better if I focus about a quarter of an inch ahead of where the blade is cutting.   It is much easier to cut on the line if I am looking a little bit ahead.

My life is not like that.   I find I am better if I pay attention to what I am doing right now, and only think about the future as needed.   This is where I live.   I miss something if I rush into the next moment or linger in some memory of the past.  My mind loves to plan and to remember.   The rest of me seems to thrive best when I am paying attention to the moment.

For me that doesn’t mean paying attention to something happening outside of me.   My greatest delight is when I am absorbed in watching myself pay attention.   If the bell is ringing, I hear it.    But I am absorbed in the act of hearing, not so much in the ringing bell.   For me it is almost a paradox that when I am attentive to the act of hearing, I become most intense in my awareness of the bell.

It becomes a ringing bell in a most intimate way.  I don’t particularly feel alert or attentive.   I am quite relaxed, and I enjoy the bell as it rings.   It takes on a reality and my curiosity rises.

Some day I hope to understand this.

I continue to be mystified by my senses, how they can both distract from awareness and heighten awareness.    The taste of a luscious peach can draw me into intense awareness.   The anticipated taste of any food can pull me into compulsive sensory behavior.

In some ways, I’m not surprised that humans have been suspicious of the senses and have become wary of sensual pleasure of any kind.   This caution is a waste and missed opportunity .

When I choose, my senses can be a welcoming gateway into awareness and delight.   I am getting better in how I choose that path.

I once heard someone say that she doesn’t really write songs.   She simply pulls them out of the air.   When she is ready and receptive, they come to her.

That seemed strange to me at the  time, but I am more aware now that creativity can’t be forced.   It simply happens when I am ready and receptive.  I have to be relaxed and open to catch a passing image that I apply to my garden or an idea that I put into writing.

I am really not actively working to be creative.    These are not images and ideas that I have actively put together.    They are nothing I could honestly say that I created.   They simply show up out of the clarity of my mind, and I catch them to make them mine.

I don’t know where they come from.   I think that my memory has a role to play because it is such a storehouse of raw material.   My imagination also has a role because it can conjure a field, a place, a white board where something can come into virtual existence.  My discerning mind is also active when it is engaged as an editor.

The creative process for me is not a pursuit, but more like a relaxing and an allowing of the creativity to happen.  It is the letting go that brings awareness or mindfulness.   Before I can be creative, the memory, mind and imagination have to quiet down somewhat.   They have to sit on their hands for a moment, stop waving them in the air.

That is when the space is opened for new images and ideas to appear out of thin air it seems.   I sometimes think that the images and ideas are “out there”, some place beyond my senses.   When I invite them, they show up, but only if there is room for them to slide into my consciousness.

One of the reasons I think that they have a “place out there” is that I can recognize them when I see them or hear them come from someone else.   They appear in things that people make or in things they say.   When someone is being creative, I seem to recognize that the creativity is happening.    I can see it in other people or in the work they produce.   It is like being able to see the beauty in a natural scene if I relax and just allow the beauty penetrate my awareness.

I think that I, like all humans, have a built-in ability to recognize art because I have the ability to become aware of a pattern.   It is a pattern that I have come to recognize as beauty.   It is a natural, built-in response that is at the core of my being an intelligent being.

The outcome of creativity can be felt, observed and captured only by me when I have relaxed my forms of awareness, my categories, my active imagination.   Art and beauty come to me in their fulness when I have entered the shapeless depth of relaxed awareness and mindfulness.   That is where I engage in my own creative process or recognize the creativity of others.

My empty mind is a caldron of creativity and recognition.   It is where, if I want, I can capture the pattern of beautiful images or ideas.

Happiness, to be experienced, must be sought, pursued and embraced.   To  be happy, I must want to be happy and take the risk of opening myself to joy.   Happiness is not a companion of fear.

So it is similar for suffering.   I must have my eyes open, then I can recognize suffering.   To accept suffering is to embrace it, envelope it, absorb it in the depths of my senses.

There is no sting.   The result is a quiet peace not unlike my experience of happiness.

I wonder what it would be like to be a plant, like a daisy.   What would it be like to experience the world, all reality, as a daisy experiences it?   My roots would be penetrating into the ground, searching for water and so many other things in the soil.    I would experience the sun warming and energizing my leaves.    Wind would blow me from all directions, mostly giving me the breath of carbon dioxide.

What would it be to simply be alive, with no sense of time, only the moment that is now.  I would have no memory of what I did yesterday or any imagination of what tomorrow might unfold.   I would only feel the exhilaration of being alive, all systems engaged.

It has been hard for me to come to terms with the realization that my body really is who I am.   I’ve listened to so many messages throughout my life that split me into body and spirit, body and mind.   So I have not really been alive in my body.    I’ve only been partially aware of its sensation and functions.   Sometimes, I think I only felt the functions I imagined were in my head, and that is where I lived.

What a joy it has been to discover not only that I have a body that extends to the tips of my fingers and toes.   My body is the interface I have with reality.

Because I have this body I am able to relax into a deep awareness of the world of which I am a part.   Once I settle into the full extent of my body, I can experience the joy of being aware.   I practice this awareness when I take time to sit and meditate.   I settle into this awareness when I  experience the joy of walking from my car across a parking lot.  I feel this joyful awareness when I sit and talk with a friend.   My body is happy, top to bottom.

I have always been suspicious of the warnings about the “pleasures of the senses”, even while I lived by the rules.    Now I know I was correct to be wary of those old men who preached sensory abstinence to me and to youths throughout the ages.   I honestly don’t understand the caution about the senses.  The body is what we have that allows us to experience joy.

Joy is not some abstract pleasure in my mind.    It is something my whole body absorbs and radiates when I  am aware.

Life may be a gift, but for me it has not been freely given.   As generous as it may seem, life demands that I seize it with all the strength I can muster.  This is the courage I attempt go bring to each morning.   Every waking morning, I feel I must choose life, embrace it, run with it.   Life may lie before me as a gift, but I must grab it to make it mine.

It may take me many tiny steps, but gradually I get there.    I become alive.

Living is not for the faint of heart, something I realize more clearly as I get older.   I want to live boldly without the certainty of how things will turn out.   The more I surround myself with protections and guarantees, the more I resist the inherent uncertainty of the moment.   Fear rather than living can become a daily routine.

I want to be as courageous and fearless as a trapeze artist who flies through the air without the security of a net.   There is no certainty of the outcome, only the awareness of the moment.   Promises of rewards, success, or forever love are both false and distracting.   There is no net, only the acute awareness of flying.

This is what comes to me in stronger and fuller waves when I move through the day with awareness.   Acceptance and immersion in the here and now is my way of flying.   For me it requires a courageous act to let go and plunge into the empty, relaxed space of the moment.   Once I take that leap, all fear is gone and the courage takes charge.

Twice this past week, I visited with friends with whom I easily leap into the moment.   There is no apprehension about the moment or the future.   Only the joy of leaping into the moment.

There have been other times I have heard friends speak of disappointment, uncertainty and fear.   Those times remind me of the great courage it takes to grab life and run with it.   It is not easy to muster the courage that comes from acute awareness and acceptance of the moment.    However, it does seem to get easier with practice.