http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/24/laws-of-physics-cant-trump-the-bonds-of-love/?smid=fb-share
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbMH3XtAMqg
Great insight into Love – a force of nature whether you recognize it or not.
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year!
From Aletheia,
Ed
Occasionally, if you’re paying attention, you’ll come across people that seem to have an effect on the flow of time. Time is a rare commodity or so we think, so we relate to it and so it occurs. Ironically, you have all the time you’ll ever need. Spending some time with one of these people who “shift time” is an excellent way to significantly impact your life and allow you to experience the true nature of time. If you’re paying attention.
I’ve had the opportunity over the past three weeks to take some vacation from work and spend my days with one of these people. Being with him has allowed me to experience a flow of time that is both slower than what I’m used to in normal day to day life and makes the world outside and its passing of time seem much faster. The days have flown by while at the same time I’ve found myself laboring to slow down, slow down my mind, slow down my desire to Do and just Be in time with this master of being. At the same time, I can hardly believe that three weeks have gone by in the outside world from my view here inside this sanctuary.
The background image that I currently have plastered on my phone to snap me back to reality is a quote attributed to Buddha. The quote is, “The trouble is, you think you have time”. Quotes are useless in and of themselves. You have to live the quote to experience it’s wisdom and power. The full picture of this one in particular, like the visual image of the old woman/young woman, is easy to miss. Easy to get caught up in the idea that the trouble is, you think you have time to do those things you’d rather put off until tomorrow. Make that bucket list, get to it, what are you waiting for. Certainly that is a valid interpretation.
After spending a few weeks with the Master, the time shifter, what I see is that the trouble is, I think I have time. <–Period. It’s so easy to get caught up in the mind made construct of time. I have a past, a present, a future and if I create this magnificent vision of “future” and live into it I can drastically alter my present and the way it occurs for me. Or, I have this past, present and future and the reason my present looks the way it does is that I know I’ve incorrectly put my past in my future, so everything that I can hope to do will most likely turn out very much like it has in the past.
Time-shifter disagrees. He has no past. He has no future. And what of his present? He is present certainly. But he doesn’t have a present either. He doesn’t have to “get himself” into the present. He is the present. It alters who I am and my experience of time. It radically points out when I’m somewhere else, not present. It cracks me across the back with his swift stick when I’m somewhere other than here, now.
Sometime soon, in his future that I can speak about, he will gain that dual edged sword of language. He will someday soon begin to relate to himself as an entity I, separate from me, separate from the world, separate from time and he will cease to be Time. He will become concerned with me, and mine, and I. He will believe that you are distinct from he. Time-shifter will become ordinary.
With conversation, reflection, and time spent with other time-shifters he may regain what has been lost. Don’t be confused that this occurring of being a time-shifter is relegated only to those with no language. I’ve met some of these “enlightened” ones, consistently being. I’ve also met some of these “enlightened” ones (we all are, aren’t we?) who shift time consistently doing. You’ll notice these time-shifters as those who leave you “less than whole”, incomplete, causing you stress between what “should be” and “what is”. This space between being and doing is what we seek when we look for balance.
Master has a complete support system in place for himself that allows for his wordly survival concerns to be taken care of. Many of the other enlightened ones do as well. This allows them to exist in a space of being, exist outside of time really. When I’m hungry, I eat. When I’m tired, I sleep. When I cry, I cry.
When I have to poop, I poop. This is where Truth/Love/Aletheia is experienced – out of Time, as Being Time.
Me and the Teacher
With Love,
Ed
Junior just happened to fall asleep in his swing while I was making the coffee. I couldn’t seem to shake the grog out of my head this morning so the only solution seemed to be some heavy duty fresh ground coffee. Emerson goes in the swing for a couple of minutes, brew the coffee, maybe even eat some Cheerios to reduce my risk of heart disease. Simple plan.
Ring, Ring. Sears on the caller ID. Hello. Yes, this is him. This guy wasn’t trying to offer me a car loan from India like most of the telemarketing calls I’ve been getting since I attempted to get some financing for a car I bought for somebody over a year ago on bankrate.com or whatever it was – never use them, ever. He was kind, fairly well spoken and wanted to send somebody over to give me estimates on any of the eight kinds of services they offer. Would it be replacement windows, an overhang of some sort, kitchen remodel, maybe a finished basement (he didn’t mention that one, but I made it up when he asked his next question).
“Sir, if you had twenty thousand dollars what would be the first thing that you would do to your house?”, he asked. Up until that point, even though I had not yet hit the “on” button on the coffee grinder/brewer, I was interested in having a powerful, meaningful relationship with this random caller on the phone. Even though the phone rang, potentially destroying my opportunity to eat some Cheerios, I still knew that love could be present and experienced with this guy from Sears. That’s who I am after all. It’s the purpose I was born for, so I say.
Evasion was the tactic I chose. Two options came to my mind. If I had 20k laying around that I didn’t have any purpose for (and I also happened to have another cool half million laying around that I did have some purpose for because if I had 20k laying around I’d have some purpose for it. In fact, the money was not the issue. Using the money to do whatever to my house is not what I’ve been figuring I’d do with the 20k that I have laying around) what would my next project be. What first came to mind is some windows in my sunroom because the builder used just about the worst possible windows that have ever been manufactured in my sunroom. I knew it would be cooler in there with all those windows but nothing like this. Or, finish the basement. I’ve been wanting to do that for a while, wanting to do it myself really for the “fun and enjoyment” of such a large home project undertaking, but since I haven’t gotten “a round to it” for so long, if I had the 520k laying around, I’d have somebody finish the basement.
I didn’t say either of those things. I said I don’t know. I wasn’t forthcoming with the information that his question elucidated from wherever responses to questions come forth from. Yeah, ummm, I’m not really sure. He pressed on, even gave me some other questions that brought to mind the same responses. I knew I was being evasive at this point. Love was out the window. Not with this guy. Not here on the phone while the baby slept in the swing.
There isn’t much required to have love present and experience. The simplest things in life are often the most elusive. Imagine your day to day life if there was love present and experienced with everybody you came across. Imagine your work. Your home life. Your visits to the grocery store. All of those billions sharing the same affinity for themselves that they share for you. Babies wouldn’t be all that special anymore with their baby magic that makes you want to be around them.
Models are only as useful as the results they allow you to produce. Here’s my model for having love be present. I’ll need to expand on the three aspects of presence, vulnerability, and trust at some point. But use what you think they mean and play around. I’m pretty sure it’s all that is necessary. Try it with your spouse, your friends at the holidays, your mother-in-law…see what happens. Write a blog entry that doesn’t make much sense. Be vulnerable when they’re being aggressive. Be present when they’re not. Trust that if you give them the answer that you’d probably get your basement finished if you had 20k laying around that your relationship will deepen, become more meaningful, and the slightest hint of “something” will arise. I call it Truth/Love/Aletheia.
I didn’t go for it with the telemarketer. I still haven’t quite mastered being vulnerable in one area when it will affect trust or presence in another area. Let me know what you find.
With Love,
Ed
The premise of this blog and of my work is quite simple really. It is this. There is love. It is everywhere, all around us, in us, through us, connecting us, aside from us, outside of us, everything that is and is not occurs in the context of this love.
That’s really it. So love. Each other. One another. Yourself. Experience it.
That’s also where it gets complicated. The first complication is that love is a word and like all words it is a symbol for something, though it is not that something. So love (even with a capital L) does not capture the something. It doesn’t properly explain it or identify it. As a word it’s open to interpretation, misinterpretation, misunderstanding, understanding. Due to this complication I call it Truth/Love/Aletheia. Aletheia may be the best word I’ve found for the phenomenon, at least as Heidegger uses it in the context of the rest of his Being and Time.
Mostly the phenomenon is concealed from our experience. This is the second complication. This causes a whole host of additional complications which I won’t attempt to go over.
Given these two basic complications, my work has been challenged to take root. My work is to have love be present and experienced. That’s it. Mostly I get in the way. Since I’ve really only experienced the phenomenon a dozen or so times with people outside of my “close circle” and even mostly have difficulty with my work with those inside my “close circle” it’s been a challenge to really put a finger on the components of having the love that is always there sort of “arise” in the space of experience.
One year ago today I, for the first time, intentionally caused love to be present and experienced with people that were, only a few days before, complete strangers. Something shifted in the space of myself and these two guys that I was having the conversation with, creating together the phenomenon and clearing the space for love to be present. In the end I was left different and known. They were left known, or something, as well. Honestly, we still haven’t fully made sense of what happened, what occurred. But we did all agree, many months later that something happened. There was a presence of being known or loved or connected or something unlike anything we’d experienced before, at least with random people that we’d only just met.
And I should point out that we’d been drinking Belgian beer all night. Then, after we experienced love as a presence Sinterclause showed up. And then I got really drunk so I could get inside the head of this incredible guy I know who jumps off of stuff, to get a better understanding of what that is for him. The night ended with me drunken facebooking. The morning began with severe pain.
Since that day, really the day after, when I found myself “barfing more” I’ve not made a lot of sense out of it all. Much of the experience has concealed itself again and I’ve found myself trying to recapture or recreate the event. Which I of course know is about the best way to not have it occur again. So, today I guess I’m just reminiscing about Truth/Love/Aletheia.
With Love,
Ed