"Water nourishes all things.
Cold ice and hot vapour both withhold the gift.
The way of warmth is the way of life."
So says the Kuan Yin Oracle once more. And how appropriate given the last entry two months ago. Perhaps it is time to talk again, without renouncing simplicity, as who will benefit from an eternal silence?
I read Solobill Laville's "11 Presentations on no-time: No past, present or future." I have never been drawn to meditating on time. But I am been prodded to do so it seems. First I read today a post on an email list claiming that suffering comes from clinging to the present, and now Solobill's essay. My instant reaction to each was disagreement, but why? Because I live in the Now. I do so because 35 years ago, a mahatma told me, as related here, that "If you can be happy now, you can always be happy." I found out how to achieve that... and it works, in seeing contradiction to the email list statement.
I started to frame responses in my mind to each. And then I thought better of it. Solobill has the gentlest way of putting things over and I am so often aware of the problems of words meaning different things to different people. I saw no use in sorting out the terminology separately in each case.
So I went instead to experience, to the all consuming Seeing as Being exercises described here and here (and plus/minus a few posts). I figured that if there is no sense of time or timelessness or no-time in that state, then it was either conjecture or not something relevant to my current needs.
And so I slip into Being Seeing. Raw power consumes me. And then I see, almost behind everything, layers - layers of existence of everything through time, like seeing an extra spacial dimension. I catch just an instant of no separation and then...
I am out of practice! I hold this only for a short span, but the consciousness continues a little and I see my hands typing this with the time dimension as space as extra dimensions overlaid on them... I think of vapour trails but it doesn't come close.
I will meditate on this experience. Perhaps I will touch the Core again and recreate it or investigate further. But it's perfectly possible, as I did when I made the switch from Seeing as Being to Seeing as an Enlightened Being, that I may say "Very nice but there's no point to this ('this' being Seeing as Being, whether looking at time or not) - not for me, not now. It neither removes my suffering nor does it help me remove anyone else's. And that's unlike when I engage in Seeing as an Enlightened Being, which has both practical use and is a consciousness possible and usable all the time."
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Storm, great post. I find myself nodding in agreement throughout. Thanks for the kind words, and the terminology comments. To me, these concepts such as time - or karma - or birth and death - really just take care of themselves beyond conceptions, so I don’t concern myself with them too much. It seems that all these sorts of “intellectual” efforts AND “practical” efforts (meditation) are the fabric of circular, upward spirals through a sort of “awareness curriculum” of learning, or un-learning, that is a necessary part of the human condition. Some recognize the concept of time, and simply say, "yes", or bow, while others will spend hours and weeks wading through conceptual intricacies to “figure it all out”. Perhaps as that spiral ultimately reaches its zenith it collapses into itself, like water swirling around the drain, but fine as a pinhead - then still - and we simply are one Great Bow, and we simply See as an Enlightened Being for the benefit of all. Thanks for the effort and inspiration.
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