“But there is something about Time. The sun rises and sets. The stars swing slowly across the sky and fade. Clouds fill with rain and snow, empty themselves, and fill again. The moon is born, and dies, and is reborn. Around millions of clocks swing hour hands, and minute hands, and second hands. Around goes the continual circle of the notes of the scale. Around goes the circle of night and day, the circle of weeks forever revolving, and of months, and of years.”
- Madeleine L’Engle
I have always loved to think about time. When I was a young reader, I read L’Engle’s trilogy on time and space travel, beginning with A Wrinkle in Time. It’s fascinating, thinking of tesseracting. As an adult, I loved L’Engle’s personal journals in which she celebrates the passing of seasons, and embraces the moments that seem to define our lives; birth, death, and all the ordinary moments in between. I love the feeling of grounded-ness in her approach to those ordinary moments, lived out as extraordinary worship, connection to God, reflection of the one life lived now in this temporary form through the celebration of chaos, glory, entropy, exhilaration, banality, and decay.
And yet, the only time that ever actually exists is now, this present moment. Future and past are illusions of the mind. Only now ever exists. As Tolle points out often, if I remember the past, I am remembering it now. If I think of the future, I am thinking of it now.
And when I get caught up in reaction to others or life or something I did or didn’t do, I lose touch with the present moment. I forget to be at peace with reality. Reality is only ever NOW.
I was reminded of Eric Fromm’s groundbreaking work, Escape from Freedom, as I exam my own mind structures and episodes of fear or judgment. If you are not familiar with his work (or that of Hannah Arendt), here is the blurb from Amazon about the book: “Why do people choose authoritarianism over freedom? The classic study of the psychological appeal of fascism by a New York Times–bestselling author.
The pursuit of freedom has indelibly marked Western culture since Renaissance humanism and Protestantism began the fight for individualism and self-determination. This freedom, however, can make people feel unmoored, and is often accompanied by feelings of isolation, fear, and the loss of self, all leading to a desire for authoritarianism, conformity, or destructiveness. It is not only the question of freedom that makes Fromm’s debut book a timeless classic. In this examination of the roots of Nazism and fascism in Europe, Fromm also explains how economic and social constraints can also lead to authoritarianism.”
It explains so much of the last 5 years in America and the cult of Trump.
That is not a judgment. It is a reminder to me that we humans constantly look to externals (life situations, leaders, others, possessions, etc) for a sense of peace, safety, or identity, a sense of self.
Of course, external, temporary forms cannot truly fulfill us. As I listen to Eckhart Tolle’s Freedom From The World retreat on Audible, I am aware of my own descent into ego structures this week.
I love this first reminder from Tolle, “you are not upset for the reason you THINK you are”. You are upset because you have lost touch with the present moment and your oneness with all of life. To be in touch with the oneness that you are with the entire universe is to enter into abundant life. To accept this moment, life, reality as it is is to be at peace with now. You are the formless, timeless one life in the universe, not just this temporary form of body and mind and emotion.
At the same time, this temporary form is a part of who I am now. So I don’t reject my body form or even all these thoughts which pass through my mind. When I am one with this moment, accepting life as it is, I am able to see that thoughts are not ultimately me. They are just forms which are passing through. They can also serve a purpose, but they are not my identity. We lose ourselves when we try to grasp or cling to externals as our identity, or when we see “them” (externals) as the “problem”.
Yesterday, I totally devolved into the old ego self, or as the New Testament calls it “the carnal self”, for those who still speak Christianese. I was upset about something. Someone didn’t do something the way I thought they should and it made a bunch of work for me. At least, that was the story I kept telling myself. And the more I told my story to myself (and anyone else who would listen) the more it became entrenched in me. It was a classic case of the Velcro/Teflon theory of neuroscience, how the brain loves to cling to “bad” stories and how it so easily lets “good” stories slip away, like cheese on a hot Teflon pan.... My brain was running away with this story of inconvenience. Soon, as it often does when we tell and retell stories, the hours that I spent fixing this “problem” were inflated. Like an old fish tale about how big the fish really was, it kept growing with each retelling in my head. Soon, I had convinced myself that I was on the verge of burnout.
Yes, I totally let my ego take over, trying to inflate my sense of self and self-importance in this little drama that was running in my head. I was upset most of the day, even when I caught myself repeating the drama, and I was able at one point to say, “okay, this is the story I am telling myself right now”, I was still caught up in the emotion of being “a victim”, of vociferating the injustice of reality, of the “how dare that guy make me have to do so much work to fix his mistake?”
And then, I listened to Tolle on Audible, starting with this little pointer: “If you are upset about something, you are not upset for the reason you think you are.” You think it is because someone did or did not do something, or that life is not the way you think it should be. Or maybe you think you are upset because YOU did or did not do something that you should or should not have done.... Nope. You are upset because you have lost touch with BEING in this moment, now. You lost sight of this present moment. Because if you and I could live in the present moment, we would recognize that reality or life is as it is. Life happens. It cannot be otherwise (as Tolle often says). So why am I upset? I’m upset because I am in conflict with the present moment. I’m either living in the past or obsessing about the future. Past rehashing looks like: “He should not have...or She should have...Or Why did I do...?” Groan! Future obsession looks something like this: “If only I could...If only I had... or If only I were..., THEN, I’d be __________ (fill in the blank: happy, fulfilled, rich, enough, loved...)”.
When I am at peace with what is, and that’s reality, (for the pragmatists or realists in the group), when I accept this moment or life as it is right now, I am not upset. I am not disturbing myself. When I accept what is happening now without reaction, without judgment, I am at peace, because I am one with reality. Not some imagined future, not some judgment about the past, eg. “He should have...she should have...They should not have... Life is not supposed to be this way...I should not have...”. But when I accept what is, because life is as it is, then I enter into oneness with all of life, with God. AND THIS IS FREEDOM! Freedom from my sense of self, freedom from the compulsion to defend my “victim” self or the compulsion to make myself superior, freedom from judging others, freedom from fear, anger, bitterness, etc.
If I am upset, it is not for the reason I think I am upset. It is not some external stimulus that has created the drama in me. It is my own internal dialogue which creates the “upset”.
So, I am learning. I am beginning to wake up to spirit self more often. Sometimes, I can quiet the complaining mind quickly, immediately. Other times, it takes over and runs my brain for a few hours...until I remember to ask myself: Do I WANT to be upset, unhappy, or angry? Do I WANT to be the source of drama for myself and others? Or do I want peace? Peace chooses to accept life as it unfolds. If I am upset, it is not for the reason I think I am upset. It is not some external stimulus that has created the drama in me. It is my own internal dialogue which creates the “upset”. I can choose to be miserable or I can remember to reconnect to this moment, now, and accept what is. When I accept the “isness” of this moment, as both Tolle and Meister Eckhart call it, I can act out of a place of calm being. Okay, so the music needs to be edited, that’s fine. I will work on it when this moment calls for me to do so. And then when I am in the moment of “working mode”, I can address the issue calmly, rationally, without judgment or reaction. I can even work on it with joy or enthusiasm. I no longer see the is-ness of life as a “problem to be fixed”. Life is as it is.
Ahhhh. Thank God for Meister Eckhart, Eckhart Tolle, and others who are shining a light for me to see the world differently.
No comments:
Post a Comment