Same old, same old

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5:59

6:00

I got you babe.  I got you babe.  Wake up campers, it’s Groundhog Day!

Look, I know it’s just a movie, but I assure you that contained within that movie are the same learning opportunities that can be acquired by reading John Shotter’s Wittgenstein in Practice and then practicing it in living, or paying 65k for the number one (average over the past 10 years) organizational development master’s program (MPOD) in the world, or cleaning up vomit from a bathroom floor, or reading (attempting at least – can somebody translate the translation please) Heidegger’s Being and Time, or walking face first into a below zero snow storm ‘coming from’ the space of love and joy, or being deployed to a combat zone, or participating in The Forum (as it used to be called), or adopting and raising somebody else’s child. 

Each of these experiences presents learning opportunities for what can be described as “transformational moments”.  I would know, because I’ve had each of these experiences, a couple of them today even.  Now, participating in all of them gives a certain kind of “multi-faceted” view or perspective that participating in only one or two of them will not provide, but this doesn’t diminish the opportunity set for the learning opportunities available in each of those experiences individually.  The above experiences are also not the exclusive set of experiences for providing the learning opportunities.  I’ve had some others and I know there are others who’ve had others.

This entry will not be a “10 lessons I learned from Groundhog Day” presentation.  You’re, as always, going to have to work a little to hear the real value of cleaning vomit off of the bathroom floor or watching Groundhog Day.  The one thing that I will point out very clearly is that each of the stated experiences provides a disruption to the conversational and temporal space in which one is experiencing life.  The taken for granted, always already ways of being in which we normally dwell.  This entry is also not intended to diminish those normally occurring day to day life events. 

Having the opportunity to live the same day in the same confined space of Punxatawney gives Phil Connors the ability to peer into the moments, in intricate detail, that make up ones day to day life.  Even still it takes him a near eternity to learn anything useful about himself at the same time he’s learning minute details about the others in the story. 

Phil realizes, shortly after he finally orchestrates the perfect day with Rita the futility of his frantic quest for the solutions or answers, the getting it right so that it will turn out.  This futility is what ultimately and finally takes him to the edge of the “self” that he knows himself to be, drives him to the depth of complete despair where he wallows for some time.  Bill Murray of course, uses the timing both comedically and dramatically to give us a look, a glimpse, at the Cartesian paradigm that Shotter references.  As a moment in time, turning to Mrs. Lancaster and answering the Jeopardy question “What is the Rhone?” is the turning point, the moment of triumph that is possible for each of us in our lives and our relationships.  This despair, no matter how thorough it is, even has its end.  Freedom to be is the natural outcome.

Phil emerges with his true being, who he’s always been, that he’s been covering up with that desire to look a certain way or do certain things to manipulate the outcomes ripped away.  There is no longer an option to pretend any more, he sees himself newly and shifts to what Shotter describes as a “relational paradigm” where “This new dialogical or relational paradigm puts the primary emphasis on our knowing of other people”.  In the Forum it was that moment when the “big it” is revealed.  In the combat zone it was that peace with knowing that one’s time will come exactly when their time comes.  And in cleaning up vomit or any of the other experiences it is that this is this.  Coming to the thus-ness of the experience…without resistance and being an opening or space for the thus-ness.

This is Truth/Love/Aletheia. Unconcealed.  Within that space there’s a freedom to play the piano, save another’s life, fall in love.  Not as a manipulation but because these are the things we do when we are freed from the constraints we showed up in.  Powerfully relating with one another. 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJOjHWr5jQc]

With Love,

Ed

One Conversation Can Change………wait for it………Everything

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Of all of the “things” that I have encountered in my life, and there are a few, there is one thought, one idea, one experience, one notion, one piece of knowledge that excites me more than any other.  It is the single bit of knowing, that when I recall it, when I allow it to really be present and be fully alive for me in the moment, it immediately expands my outlook, my view of the future, my capacity for possibilities, exponentially larger.

It’s such a simple thing too.  It crept up on me.  I wasn’t looking for it, in fact I was actively resisting it when it happened.  Then, all of a sudden, there it was.  My future was instantly different.  My outlook altered.  My box expanded, or blown right off of me really.

One conversation can change everything.

Your life is going in a certain direction, a fairly predictable trajectory, and then that one conversation happens.  It may be with yourself, or it may be a “conversation” that you read, but most often it’s with another human being.

My favorite, the one that really set me on fire and put me on a new and completely unknown, unexpected, unpredictable path for the rest of my life happened with one of my favorite people in the world.  This person has known me since the day I was born, has always cared for me, looked after me and because of that I had an immeasurable amount of trust for them.

Within that trust of my listening, I was told a story about a conversation they’d had with another in which the story teller made themself completely vulnerable, at risk, and authentic.  They were willing to put everything that they had in life up until that point on the line, including the relationship itself, in the interest of having a complete and authentic relationship.

Listening to this story, and hearing the vulnerability and the willingness to risk everything for the sake of what could be, moved me.  I’d never heard a more courageous story before, and very few since.  I wanted that kind of courage. I knew in that moment that living my life without that kind of courage would mean that I had barely lived at all.  Hearing this story altered what I knew about life, how it could go, how it should go, how it would go.  It changed me.  It made possible the kind of relationships that I could have, that I do have in my life.

It was a moment of truth.  Listening to that story, sitting on the edge of my seat, I could hear a pin drop.  I could hear my audible gasp, being in awe of the power of the spoken word and its ability to evoke a response deep within the recipients of those received words.  Its ability to move me to action, to melt the most hardened heart, to presence compassion, truth, love and being in a moment in time. 

Have you ever had a conversation that changed everything?  I’d love to hear about it if you did.  If you haven’t, I’d love to have one with you.

With Love,

Ed

I Live A Charmed Life – By Design

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“… sound doctrines are all useless… you have to change your life. (Or the
direction of your life.)… wisdom is all cold… you can no more use it for
setting your life to rights than you can forge iron when it is cold… The
point is that a sound doctrine need not take hold of you; you can follow it
as you would a doctor’s prescription. – But here you need something to
move you and turn you in a new direction… Once you have
been turned around, you must stay turned around. Wisdom is passionless.
But faith is what Kierkegaard calls a passion” (Wittgenstein, L. (1980) Culture and Value, introduction by G. Von Wright, and translated by P. Winch. Oxford: Blackwell, p.53).

Yesterday was my first official day running the daddy day care, as the experience has been called. More formally I began a twelve week “family medical leave act” leave of absence from my traditional work to continue the care of my now 4 month old son.  Just to clarify, I was off throughout most of the month of December using vacation time performing the same task and assisting him in his journey from around three months to four months.  The difference now is the amount of “at cause-ness” that went into taking three months off from a day job that I’ve held for over ten years.  The difference is the value that I’m noticing in trading my not too shabby salary for an irreplaceable experience.  Isn’t this really what defines value – what you’re willing to give up for one thing in order to experience another thing?

From what I’ve been told, I am part of the 3% of American men who take the incredible oppoortunity that the FMLA provides. Would I say that I’m special for being part of such an elite number? Is that the point of this post, to indicate what a great American man I am, what a dedicated father, what a groundbreaking thinker and life live-er?  Well, I am still housing this ego so maybe partially.

Sharing this story is also partially a tribute to “my old man” (as Springsteen may have said).  It’s an acknowledgement of the context in which he, and many of us fathers, live our lives as the provider, the bread winner, income earner.  Trading these experiences of being there with our children who we love so much that we would trade the time that we would have with them to go out day after day and provide for their survival.  The money that buys the food, water, shelter that allows our species to continue on.  As a child I had a sense that was how it was for my father, sensed that he didn’t particularly care for the 6 am to 3 pm, five days per week for 35 years blue collar life.  But I was clear that he did it for his family and for that I knew I was loved even if it wasn’t verbalized.

It’s also an acknowledgement of the shifting context that enables women to work (for equal pay, maybe?), be the primary income producer in a family, and provide value and meaning into a working world equal to what it is that they’re giving up to fight that fight and endure that struggle, and equal to what they’re leaving behind.  I see my joining the 3% as the seldom noticed back of the hand of that struggle.  Yet, you can also hear the “speaking from” the current paradigm exhibited here and that’s the real point.

The intended value of this post – you trading your time to read it for what you may get out of it – is in noticing the privilege that this opportunity is for me, and then noticing that it’s part of a carefully laid out plan for producing results consistent with living a life equal to the opportunity that living life is.  A once in a lifetime shot to live fully in the one and only life that I have.  Living a life that is equal to the opportunity that living life is does not just happen.  I like to say that I live a charmed life, which I do.  It isn’t charmed in that it just “magically” happens however.  I live a charmed life because I take the stand that I live a charmed life.  I say that I live a charmed life and then I produce results consistent with living a charmed life (or I don’t).

There was a great deal of build up, tension, uncertainty and ambiguity in getting to this point, living a charmed life does not mean living an easy life by any stretch.  Which is why I write this post today, rather than a few weeks ago.  I will occasionally share the massive failures in not producing the results consistent with living a charmed life – the ratio of 3:1 – 5:1 positive to negative must be maintained in this blog as a matter of maintaining the authenticity of it.  The results have been tallied in this exercise and it looks like we’ve made it.  The build up began over a year ago while I was still in the MPOD program, in the early stages of executing the formal plan, which has all been part of the overall plan, the sound doctrine.

While one is in the midst of any major change initiative it is often difficult to measure whether any change is really happening.  Changing the course of one’s life toward a previously unimagined future is often the most challenging of all change initiatives to measure.  When it is your life that is changing you’re just too close to it to know if it is “turning out” as envisioned.  Following a path that is being created as each step is taken is like navigating a thick forest on a moonless night.  You have your compass and you use it, but until you emerge from the brush as the sun rises above the clearing you’ve “entered”, created really, you can not know if you’ve navigated rightly.  Attempting to measure in the midst of the trees and darkness is a futile endeavor, orienting your steps with presence and purpose and letting your physical intuition be your guide is useful yet mis-steps are likely to occur.  It is only in looking back at that forest in the daylight that you can fully appreciate the steps that had been taken, the risk that was navigated.

Building some competence through practical application of causing intentional change allows your muscles of intuition to strengthen, your resolve to walk your own path is refined, and your willingness to trust yourself, to have faith when the common, everybody knows the way it’s supposed to work, wisdom of the world is butting up against the stand that you are.

Look, I know that I’m just taking time off to stay home.  Millions, billions of people have done this.  For me, it’s not something that I’d ever considered, not because I didn’t consider it like I thought I couldn’t do it but because it never even showed up for me as a possible option that life could present to me.  In the spectrum of possibilities that life presents it was always there.  I didn’t see it.  I wasn’t open to looking to see what I wasn’t able to see.  It was concealed.  Then, along my path of continuing to question everything, to be a space where truth can show up, it revealed itself, unconcealed itself.  Aletheia.

My son caught a cold over the holidays.  He was a snotty, moaning, sickly mess on my first two days of daddy day care.  I’ve had sick babies in the past but I’ve never experienced them the way I did my son today.  In the past, these things were my wife’s concern, my mother-in-law’s, the baby sitter’s – I didn’t have a clue how to comfort a sick baby and I was going to be at work anyway.  That was the way it occurred within that context.  Yesterday and today, I experienced the complete privilege and satisfaction that goes along with being only of service to a sick little baby, even when all that service can be is to hold them and comfort them as they moan with that raspy sick little baby voice.  No room for my petty concerns, just room for being the space for comfort.  Charmed – by design.

From Love,

Ed

Being Time

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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

Me and the Teacher

With Love,

Ed

Love Telemarketers

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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.

LoveModel

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

Love Present

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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.

CIMG1683

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

Thankful…For What I’ve Lost

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Thanksgiving day.  Not much of an opportunity between prepping the food (assisting really), loading the car, arriving at the feast, eating too much.  But that seems to be the order of things lately so I’d better adapt and blog anyway.

It’s been a couple of months and in that time I’ve spent reflecting I notice it’s been a year of loss.  Some of the losses are tough to get over – my attachment to how things had been, wishing for that one more moment of whatever.  In an amazing life of blessings, opportunities and events to be thankful for I notice about every decade or so there seems to be a groundswell of losing.  Not having things go my way, having endings rather than new beginnings.

This has been one of those years.

Today then I give thanks for the things I’ve given up either by choice or by the natural progression of life.  In the past (no guarantee it will be this way in the future) giving up all of those things has been a clearing of space and clutter within the space.  Giving those things up has allowed for seeing who I’ve been being in those relationships, how I could have made the difference that made a difference, or enjoying the fact that I made the type of adjustments necessary for living a powerful, fulfilling existence.  Giving up those things that I’ve lost allowed the clearing for the new magnificence to appear.

One thing reveals itself in times of loss – if you are willing to be bold and make yourself vulnerable.  The grieving and sorrow and anger and fear of more loss are an indication of the true loss, the loss of love present and experienced.  It’s challenging to trust again when one has lost, or make oneself vulnerable again, or willing to be present to the current experience in the moment.  But if I dust myself off, cry when necessary or be angry when necessary, and then forgive again or let go of my attachment to how I expected it to go, the intention that I had that was thwarted, and deliver that undelivered communication what shows up in that space again is Love.  Truth.  Aletheia.  The source of it all.

The same thing that reveals itself when we’re winning.  It’s always there and sometimes we’re just blind to it.  I miss my Father this year at Thanksgiving, and the others.  But the presence of their love is here if I allow the space for it.  If you allow yourself to experience it, I hope you sense the presence of my love for you.

With Sweet Sorrowful Truth/Love/Aletheia,

Ed

The Moment of Truth (Right Now)

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When you’re being at the moment of truth, really just being the moment of truth, the experience of time’s passing slows dramatically.  The wisdom aspect of it is a knowing everything and a knowing nothing all at the same time.  Present.  To everything.  And Nothing.

It was a grey 1978 Ford Fairmont.  It had the sweet, dashed, between-the-windows stripe but that had been painted over by an Earl Sheib $89.95 special.  They used a matching grey but painted right over that sweet stripe…unbelievable.  That’s probably why it was so cheap.  Tony says we paid $50 bucks to Dave for it …I’m thinking it was a little more like $50 bucks each, but the certainty of that memory is lost to time.  I probably wasn’t present at that moment of truth.

Either way, the Fairmont wasn’t running.  Tony said he heard that Fairmont’s made great sleeper cars and that this one with the straight six under the hood could be a beast – not The Beast – that’s another moment of truth, but a beast.  The plan was that we would work on it in the neighbor’s garage, and when we were done with it we’d race it…Quigley Avenue or something.  Nothing like Norwalk or anything like that…at the time my ability to dream was a little stifled and suppressed by the stories I’d made up in the past.

It was supposed to turn out like this Fairmont.[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aDa9-9Fl7w?feature=player_embedded]

That Ford Fairmont would have been really bad-a$$…not to mention that we sawed out the steel plate behind the backseat (I think Tony did all the work) so it would also be an incredible camping machine. Picture it – just pop out that back seat and two people could easily sleep in the trunk (and backseat) with nothing more than a sleeping bag.  It was like a Chevy Avalanche but in 1987 – we were way ahead of our time.  And it would have been an incredible racing machine – hah!  I just thought of this – not only was it a sleeper*, it was also a sleeper.  Visionaries.

The only problem with the plan was that neither of us really had enough money to sink into this car to turn it around.  It was Tony’s neighbor with the garage right next door so he spent some time over there messing with it, but I just don’t remember being over there all that often.  I remember feeling powerless to do anything because I didn’t know very much about cars at all, I had no money, and I was too worried about looking bad to admit any of that to anybody that may be able to assist us.  I recall highlights such as getting that steel cut out, and actually getting the thing running with tons of starter fluid directly into the opened up carburetor.  That was mostly what was wrong with it, the carburetor, and Tony tinkered away enough with it that we got it running.  We were so psyched, we had the hood off but we just had to take it out for a ride.  That was the only ride I ever had in our bad-a$$ Ford Fairmont.

Eventually the neighbor got sick of that heap sitting in her garage.  Something happened to the transmission…I wasn’t around when it did and I don’t know that I ever really understood what…exactly…happened.  I didn’t care. I was busy having other powerful life altering learning events. Eventually that car ended up sitting on a gravel lot at Pearl and Bader outside of a friend of ours’ house, a house he was renting I think.  It sat there for a few months.  It seemed like forever when I’d drive by and still see that car sitting there.  Time moved a lot slower even normally then…a few months seems like years when you just turned 18.

Seeing that lost dream sitting there for ALL THAT TIME eventually made me start asking Tony what exactly happened to the transmission.  Was there anyway to fix it? Did you even get underneath there to check it out?  What happened when it stopped working?  We stopped there to reveal the answers to these questions, maybe it was just so I’d stop asking questions and I could find out for myself.

Tony was there, Bob was there, Ed was there, maybe Chris from inside the house was there (he wanted it out of there by then too).  I don’t remember how we got there, or too much on either side of the moment of truth.  We took the factory jack out of the trunk and put it under the car and started jacking it up.  It was one of those uni-body cars or whatever they called them at the time…they were making cars lighter to get better gas mileage so the days of a big heavy frame were over.  And the jack was one of those expanding diamonds…starts out flat and raises up just enough at the very top so you can get a tire off.

When I was a kid I was always warned about getting under cars on a jack.  I only heard the story once about the friend of the family whose son got crushed by a car.  That kind of story only needed to be heard once and I didn’t even have any of the details.  The only thing I really knew about the story was that it happened the same day he was playing with a Ouija board with his friends.  It was an effective story – I was left fearful of getting under cars and playing with Ouija boards.

For whatever reason, that fear was not there that day (probably so I could someday write this story and alter the course of somebody’s life by revealing the distinction “being present”).  I must have really been messing with Tony, pressing him about the transmission.  I got down on my back and slid myself in there.  Once I started looking at that transmission I realized where I was.  I didn’t see any major leaks, but it looked quite a mess around the bell housing with greasy gloppy stuff all around.

Then time went all slow motion on me.  My senses were already heightened because I had just realized where I was, and at the same time the voice was chattering as it does about not wanting to look like a big wuss, freaking out and pulling myself out from under that car.  It didn’t matter.

While those two things were happening, another simultaneous sound was happening, and I was hearing it at the same time the voice was telling me that you wouldn’t want to look like a wuss.  Hearing a cheap, piece of crap, yet still solid steel Ford factory tire jack break through the rusted out, unibody, not-frame of a 1978 Ford Fairmont sounds exactly the way you would expect it to sound.  When you’re under that Ford Fairmont it sounds like the sound of chewing Peanut Butter Captain Crunch recorded and played in slow motion at a really high volume.

There is where the moment of truth began.  Like I said in my last post the moment of truth is happening every moment, every second, of every minute of every hour, of every day.  The Truth/Love/Aletheia about it is that those seconds, minutes, hours, days don’t actually exist – they’re something we’ve made up, and agreed that they exist.  All there is are moments of truth (right now).  It’s useful to be able to relay the stories of things that have happened in the seconds, and minutes, and hours, and days gone by or the plans of the seconds, and minutes, and hours, and days ahead but they are not to be confused with truth.

Aletheia.  An immediate unconcealing.  A revealing of Truth.  Love, present, and experienced.

During the slow motion crunching sound, while looking at the greasy bell housing, the instinct to turn my head happened.  During the slow motion crunching sound, while my head was turning I saw the car getting lower.  There was no voice in my head.  There was only that slow motion crunching sound, the car getting lower, the increased pressure on my pectoral muscles where the welded seam of the unibody not-frame met the floor boards of the more fuel efficient-than-my-father’s-old-blue-1970-Ford-Galaxy-500-that-my-brother-wrecked 1978 Ford Fairmont.

Wide-awake.  Aware. Not enough experience around it to know that’s what I was, not like being light aware and wide-awake.  Hearing everything, not loudly but clearly and crisply.  Seeing that the car had stopped moving, feeling my chest pinned yet still able to take in and let out breath, lightly yet heavily.  Seeing out of the periphery vision the feet scurrying by my feet outside from under the lightning fast sleeper Ford Fairmont.  The gasps.  The oh no’s, the oh-my-God, oh-my-Gods, leading to the Ed, Ed, are you alrights.  Situation assessed here under the car…not the “voices in my head” assessment…a silent knowing assessment without language – a Self assessment.  Without words.  Head’s not smashed, breathing heavy but good, no send me into unconsciousness pains, not laughing either – but feeling good.  Feeling grateful, and appreciative, and I can say it now as a story – loved.  Dodged a bullet loved, though, got lucky loved…not intentional and not having caused it.  Not willfully present and mindful and Wise.

Wisdom it was nonetheless.  The second time I’d felt it.  A time in slow motion oneness with the moment.  A knowing, sensing everything while knowing nothing at all.  Not dodging death, but just not yet time to die.  Under that car, one of the things I most feared happened and I was not dead (good thing I hadn’t been using a Ouija board).

That was how the experience was for me – drawn out in story here for sure, and I want you to understand that talking about the moments that fill a 15 second time span as a watch ticks – telling the story about those moments is not those moments.  Most of the time we’re missing those moments with the dialogue we’re filling the space with.  But life occurs in those moments, those moments of truth (right now).  And it is possible to  intentionally experience moments right now without all of the noise and distraction and consideration about how you look and what they’ll think and just be grateful and appreciative of them scurrying about acting astonished about what just happened even though what just happened always happens and when you’re present you’re not surprised that it just happened.  We can be present and wise right now.

As my friends like to tell the story…everybody’s freaking out and saying are you alright, Ed are you alright?  Then there’s a silence and they wait for the answer. As calm as can be, Ed says, “Pick….the….car….up.”  And that was how it was for me – calm as can be.  They picked the car up, I slid out and the moments carried on.  I grinned as I do.

With Love,

Ed

* A sleeper is a car that looks to be ordinary, nothing special…until you pull up next to it to race and only then is its Truth/Love/Aletheia revealed.

Being at the Moment of Truth

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Mindfulness.  Being Present.  Wisdom.  Living in the moment.  Right now.

These are terms, words or phrases describing phemonena that occur within our experience.  Understanding that the term is not the phenomena and that the term does little justice to relaying the experience of the phenomena is a worthwhile thing to understand.  These different realms of “knowing” (concept, phenomena, experience) fall under the broad heading of epistemologies.

Truth/Love/Aletheia is dedicated to broadening and expanding knowledge of Truth/Love/Aletheia (right now).  There are many other terms which can be used to “label” the phenomena, many terms that are “like” the terms above, and many terms which are confused with and thereby dillute the understanding of the phenomena.  Explaining the phenomena will almost always be a second best effort of actually experiencing the phenomena.

Allowing you to gain first hand experience of the phenomena of wisdom is my desire in writing.  Honestly, there’s little use for it, as in, it can’t be used for the normal things we want – making money, having power, getting what we (think we) want (usually a result of money and power), being admired, maintaining the illusion of control.  What it does allow for is a “clean” place to come from and operate in the world.  It occurs as peace in experience.  In the world I see and experience from people (and myself) a great deal of suffering often inflicted on people by other people, and almost always inflicted on oneself.

“Wisdom”, (aka Truth/Love/Aletheia, mindfulness, being present, living in the moment, etc), “is not something to learn.  Wisdom is something which will come out of your mindfulness.  So the point is to be ready for observing things, and to be ready for thinking.  This is called emptiness of your mind.”  (Suzuki – Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind)

During a previous post I spoke of enlightenment and a being all things and light and nothing.  We live in the so called real world however and most of the time we aren’t experiencing being light.  We are making dinners, and working with other people, and buying things, and singing, and eating and doing what we do.  Wisdom is a being enlightened all the time, doing the mundane, being-in-the-world.  This is where truth/love/aletheia is experienced at the moment of truth.

The moment of truth occurs every moment when you’re present.  In the normal course of events you may not necessarily notice the moments in your life when you were fully present unless somebody shares the story of their experience with you and distinguishes being present.  In the next few of my posts I’m going to share some moments of truth that I’ve had – many of these moments just happened, as in – I was going about my day to day business and then blam – I was present; mindful, and empty of mind all at the same time – a dialetheia.

Sometimes people relay stories about things that I’ve done.  I don’t even know they’re telling other people about them and I find it funny when I hear about it later.  I still can’t tell if they’re telling those stories because I’m admired, or they thought well of me, or they’re telling these stories as a warning to others.  At this point I’m love either way.  One of the stories people tell about me is the time the car fell on me.  For me it was just The Moment of Truth.

With Love,

Ed