Friday, August 11, 2006

MyHistory

As far as the watching of history and how we react to it as it unfolds… the timing of certain events in my life currently can only be described as cosmically arranged…
So, after a wonderful weekend where I did a Yoga-Tai Chi fusion workshop, had a blast dancing til the wee hours of morning at a wild, fun Punjabi wedding on Treasure Island, went on an intriguing date and worked on my Challenge of the Moonth….. I began to start feeling a vague uneasiness by Monday evening.

By Tuesday morning I had a cold, by evening I had fever and chills and aches and by nighttime I knew something was quite wrong. It was like my body was preparing for, and yielding to, something ominous, and curling up in fearful anticipation. Wednesday morning I woke up to read the full story of the planned terrorist attack unfolding in London.

And it all made sense now at a personal level. I am flying to London tomorrow for several months and perhaps there was some premonition of impending stress, turmoil and discomfort that my body (and spirit?) had sensed from the Universe as it was happening and before I had any sensory ‘information’ of it?

Now that I know, factually and intellectually, of course I am preparing, medicating, understanding and gearing up for defense. It’s interesting though, how much before the mind took over, something deeper and more in tune with the Universe had picked up on the interplay of my inner and outer worlds.

Sunday, August 06, 2006

A year of living

What does one do with linear time when one wants to live in the Now? The paradox of using time to get out of time is a tough one to understand. I can only be in the Now, now. Never then, the then being in past or future of linear time. In this moment which will last fleetingly in linear time, but forever in the Now, I have to live all my life. What did they say – the Romans lived 2000 years ago. No, actually the Romans lived in the Now. But today, in this moment the only way that I can understand their Now, is as a thought that they lived 2000 years ago. Which is simply that – a thought – they could’ve lived 2 years ago for all I know, in some other interpretation of linear time.

In some other cultures say, just as we say it takes 365 days to make a year, perhaps the gauge is different – just like we have the FPS system and metric system and both make sense and both relate to each other and both are used to measure the exact same thing but come up with a different number altogether!

This milk bottle is 3.4 liters but only 1 gallon. It is, however, just this milk bottle. One is a nice round number and the other is this arbitrary sounding number 3.4, but they both denote the same thing – the milk in the bottle.

Similarly for time, I suppose. A day is the amount of time – or re-occurrence of the event of – the earth to rotate on its own axis. A year is the amount of time it takes for the earth to revolve around the sun – 365 days. What, though, if a year or was the amount of time that it took for the earth to rotate around something else? Or solar-system-year was the amount of time that the entire solar system took to complete one whole rotation around its own axis or revolution around some other “center” of reference? And what if that planet year could map to our year in some way: 1 solar-system year = 500 earth years.

The Romans then lived 4 years ago.
The Romans, though, still lived in the Now. My thought and understanding in this ego form of this ‘happening’ changes completely and I now think – oh, they lived quite recently, didn’t they.

So what the heck is the point here? The point is this: what if our partitioning method for our existence on this earth was completely different? What if, instead of living 80 years, we only conceptually lived 8 (solar-system) years. 2 child years, 2 young adult years, 2 adult years and 2 senior years. Would my thoughts and perceptions of reality, and happiness and success and failure change completely?

Would I now look at my life, and create events and experiences in my life, to fulfill different goals and purposes?

Would the ego – perhaps conditioned to experience more and worry less – relate to Absolute Reality in a completely different way?

Would the ego even exist? Would Absolute Reality get it, right away, that there was no point in putting structure and mappings and models on the Now to really understand the Now? That, in fact, the understanding of the Now, could only emerge when we stepped out of all maps and models and pattern-sets superimposed on the Now.

Only then could I see everything for what it really is. This long (or short), complex (or simple), profound (or trivial), beautiful (or shocking), subtle (or gross)-----
event (or non event), thing (or no-thing), happening (or non-happening) ….
which just IS (or IS NOT)?

Which just ?