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With all the television and newspaper coverage given to marking the advent of both the New Year and the New Millennium, we can easily forget that they are both fictions. They do not exist in any other reality than that of human thought. They are useful but arbitrary constructs derived for the purpose of giving form to one of our favorite human inventions ---time.
Our current solar calendar replaced the lunar calendar in general popularity in the western world about 1500 years ago (by solar calendar reckoning). There is no guarantee that, when what we now call the Third Millennium A.D. rolls around, it will be the current standard of determining our past, present and future.
Most of us have been hypnotized by our inherited construct of time. Rather than relating to it as a useful illusion, a linear construct that is a playing field for creativity and Self-expression, we focus our attention and concern on mental images and sensations called the past, and strive to achieve mental imaginings called the future.
What is lost is the obvious: the present moment is the ONLY moment in which reality presences itself. NOW is the only "time" that we can be fully present to life. In the illusion of time, however, the present moment is relegated to being a mere hiccup between the past and the future---a stepping-stone to reach an unrealized "someday" where fulfillment (hopefully) will occur. When we are operating from the dimension of time into life, we find ourselves in a world of enduring and striving, whose currency consists of judgments, evaluations, comparisons, ideals, expectations, attachments, gains and losses. Then we are chained to the elusive search for happiness (which is circumstantially and time determined), rather than open to the profound presence of joy (which is Being determined and timeless).
Plants, animals and the stars do not know our reality of seconds, minutes, hours, weeks, months and years that so shape our view of life. They live from a timeless reality that is the background for the human world of time. They exist as expressions of the infinite timeless Presence unfolding and enfolding itself in this moment. They come into being, unfold their glory in form, and then return to the formless. It is all, in each new moment, the vibration of infinite energy in motion.
The joke is that all that we human beings yearn for, that gives our lives meaning and nurtures us, exists in the timeless dimension.
Recall the experience of being in a fully creative flow, or a moment when you were deeply present to your love for someone. What happens to time? Is there anything other than this moment? Isn't your awareness sharper, with full attention to what is presenting itself in this moment? What emotions are present? Aren't you more fully present, fully BEING?
Those states that most nurture us arise not in the construct of past, present and future, but in the timeless dimension of Being. When we come from the dimension of the timeless into life, we are present to our own true nature---I AM Awareness. We embrace the world and others as they are, present to all of life as a play of consciousness, present to the pulse of the infinite that beats within everyone and everything.
The construct of past, present and future gives you the story of your life. Being aware and awake to this timeless moment gives you life itself. Then you are "home." I AM is your doorway to Being. What arises naturally is love, gratitude, grace, compassion, joy and bliss.
-- Hal Isen
From Core Wisdom On-Line Number 3 - January, 2001 541-488-7687 |
