Flowing with the Waves

“Time is an illusion, timing is an art.” -Stefan Emunds

Timing is everything, as they say. In tantra it is. The waves of the world, the waves of the universe, are in harmony with the beats of the heart, the frequencies of the brain, the impulse of the soul. Or not. If they are out of alignment, we suffer. If they are aligned, everything flows effortlessly.


“You better know when to ride the waves, and when to dive deep” -Sunheart, “Wild Wind”

There is a time to ride the waves. You find yourself perfectly positioned with your surfboard at just the right moment when the big one comes rolling up. 

But when that great wave comes and you are in the place where it will break over you and crush you into the pulverized shells at the bottom of the beach, this is not the moment to mount the surfboard, lest you, and it, be splintered into pieces. That would be the time to dive deep, right into the heart of the wave, to go right through the wave, and let it pass harmlessly on by.

There are ourstorical moments for each great turning in our cultural evolution. Like a time of ripeness, when the fruit falls into the hand without pulling. The same for each tiny turning in the flow of the day, or the seasons of ones’ life. Everything is in spin. You must learn to watch and flow.

The deep dive is no less of a going with the flow. Ponder the salmon who seems to leap easily up the waterfall. How can this happen? How can this small creature seemingly defy gravity and the enormous power of the rushing stream and go the opposite way?

Because of the spin. As the water crashes downward onto the steps of the waterfall, it must move, it must go somewhere. Currents of counterspin are created, whirling eddies that the salmon taps into for upward thrust, enabling them to fly up into the air.


Everything is always in motion, fast or slow. There is always choice. And never only two choices. The possibilities fan out before you endlessly opening, rushing sometimes so fast through the narrows that you hardly appreciate the options. But there is a thing, a no thing, really, a still point that is no point, from which you can see your way.

Here I digress, for the universe has no lines, and no points, really. Our mathematics, based on points and lines therefore starts out on the wrong foot, and misleads our thinking from its very first assumptions. The point to which I refer is an imaginary not a physical point, but a mental point of view.


It is the still point that is in the center of meditation. It is the ever receding stillness as you go deeper and deeper into quiet behind the quiet behind the quiet place. The cause that gave rise to the cause that gave rise to the cause, on back toward the beginning that never was.

But you need not be deep in meditation, for it is available at every moment, at every decision point, before even, every thought. The empty center of no where is everywhere all the time, and never not, even if you forgot.

“When you obey the rules, the rules obey you” 

-Ernest Agyemang Yeboah




Wonder

“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.” Socrates

All good things begin with a wonder.

It is one of the most important jobs in the world, wondering. You have to be kind of relaxed and open to do it. Every moment is full of possibilities, but often we see only one or two. Fear is a state of heart and mind like blinders on a horse, it keeps you from seeing anything but the one thing just in front of you. Then the only possibility seems to be to go on, or, not. This kind of thinking short circuits your higher mind.

“We are perishing for lack of wonder, not for lack of wonders” -G.K. Chesterton 

There are many cues on offer that tend to drive one into fear every day. The news for example, which is merely an efficiently collected pile of the day’s most shocking things, in which the vast majority of normal goodnesses are ignored and discarded. I’m not saying don’t keep up with your world, just keep your perspective. 

Then there is the actual structure of your media and social communication. If everyone around you is upset, or angry, or stressed out, it is harder to hold in your heart a center of peace and love. We are creatures who are designed by evolution to be attuned to our social environment. And if your main outlet for these cues and your social knowledge is a curated online social media feed microtargeted to you by corporate algorithms, who is choosing for you how you are being pushed to feel? 

Who is in charge? Who is your social influencer? 

There are more than only two choices, to be online, or not. The inter web offers millions of doors you can open. The outer world also.

Wonder can only arise when you get out of fear and remove the blinders. There is always a third way. And a fourth. And a fifth, and so on out to infinity. The constricted mind can’t handle this. In a more authoritarian cultural past, curiosity was considered a sin. Adherence was paramount. Straying meant banishment, isolation from the tribe meant certain doom. Obey, or die! Old cultural habits are deep grooves, like ruts, like the deep lines carved into the now dried muddy road, or into your brain; easy to fall into, easy to get stuck in. A population kept in a constant state of hurry and worry is ripe for authoritarian control.

“I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.” Gerry Spence

Try it now. Meditate with eyes closed for a short while, until you are relaxed. Breathe, feel your body...

Then maybe open your eyes and walk around, or you can even wander in virtual space. Be curious about something; maybe open one of those other millions of doors on the inter web. Google a phrase from a song you like, a silly question, an imaginary place you would like to see. Find something new. Someplace where you have never wandered. It can be a rich and veritable palace of wonders. 

“Anything can make me stop and look and wonder, and sometimes learn.”- Kurt Vonnegut 

 

Wonder is a small still voice that whispers. The sound of wonder is a child’s voice. Wonder bubbles up from the quiet moments. Wonder is the original spark of all new ideas that have made your life better. Wonder lifts you out of either/or into what if? The new golden age begins with signs and wonders, pattern breakers that uplift you, rather than cause you to contract in fear.

“Think and wonder, wonder and think.” -Dr. Seuss

I wonder if we can all begin to appreciate more of the wonders all around us.

It’s Later Than Its Ever Been

“It was later than I thought, when I first believed you, now I cannot share your laughter, ship of fools”- Grateful Dead

It’s later than it’s ever been, but it’s not too late. Let’s take stock of the present moment. 

Air, water, and earth, poisoned and degraded, climate spiraling out of any semblance of predictable, ice caps melting, sea levels rising up into the worlds’ coastal cities where most people live, weapons of mass destruction loaded and pointed, with new and more destructive ones continuing to be built with money gained from exploiting people and planet, whole species of plants and animals disappearing from the world daily in an unprecedented mass extinction caused by only one species, non democratic surveillance states closing in on billions of people, and super mega corporations promoting the status quo of inexorable deterioration when radical change is our only hope. Wow.

On the other hand, we are smarter than ever before. There are probably as many great geniuses alive today as all the ones that have ever lived put together, though intelligence is not the same as wisdom. Still, there are probably as many wise souls alive today as have ever lived, all put together. There is more democracy and inter communication than ever before, despite the proliferation of mis and dis information on the same channels.

There is a growing awareness of the above stated problems, on the part of people everywhere, including masses of regular people as well as the super smart and wise ones, and they are thinking about it, and working on it. There are technical solutions to all of the environmental problems, and all that is lacking is the political will to act on them. We even have diplomatic channels and formats for working out out political differences peacefully, standing down, and the beginning of prototypes for relinquishing our weapons and disarming. Other than petty corruption and the desire of individuals in power in non democratic countries there is no longer any reason for the warlike preparations going on, no reason not to share the planet in peace and harmony. War is truly obsolete now. 

“It does not have to be ‘you or me,’so selfishness is unnecessary and war is obsolete.”-Bucky 

Delusional and foolish billionaires dig holes where they can hide out and put their stolen loot in, and build spaceships to escape the gravity of what their policies are leading to, but it is here on the surface of Earth, now, where the solution is growing. While they fantasize about teraforming Mars, we still have a viable planet that is far better right here, if only we could just change our mind. And heart.

The real issue is a question as to whether enough of us can get wise enough to make smart decisions, in time. It’s later than it’s ever been.

But it’s not too late.

I wonder what we will choose...

“Jesus wept.”-The Bible

Changing while Dancing

“Wherever you go, go with all your heart” -Confucius

Repatterning is a work in progress, a dance that continues, a way of moving through world of time and space.

Reality kicks in. The day begins just like the days before all of the great resolutions. With the same place, the same people, the same patterns. We are pattern makers. Change is hard. We love our routines, our cozy ruts, especially in the wintertime.

We are creatures of habit, in a universe of cycles, living in a carefully synchronized world of measured and numbered repetitions we love to expect and count on.

You can’t stop the world spinning, you can only go with the flow. So the only way to change is to first acknowledge the rhythms and own the ones you dance to. And own that you probably don’t want to change all that much.

If you are reading this, you have already come a long way. You have created many patterns you like. But you also want to go on learning, growing, improving, or you wouldn’t be here. So how to change, yet keep what you like?

It helps to identify what your patterns are providing you, what needs they are trying to meet. Ask, if this is something I want to change or adjust, or let go of, and what can I fit into its place to meet the same need?

The replacement gets slotted into the pattern, but it is more conscious, more elegant. The new habit is of a higher order.

Small, incremental changes, baby steps in the right direction are just as good as giant leaps, which can easily bounce you right back to where you were, or worse. Big sweeping changes will often just sweep you off your feet and out of your balance. Better to find a stride you can keep doing a little at a time, making progress slowly but surely. Crash programs cause crashes.

Let each step be easy, but soon you can see it adds up to some real elevation gained, and you are rewarded with a feeling of progress.

Find a spot in your already established patterns for each new tweak. Schedule the one time or once in a while things you want to do, and build in a reward of some kind at the same time.

But there is a benefit to the act of pattern interruption. A vacation from the whole cycle, just to get perspective so you can reassess. 

The best way to do this is to physically go somewhere different, away from all of the cues to your regular habits. See if you can break free of stuck patterns for a short period; try out new ways of being yourself. 

The trick here is to have a way to apply your insights when you return to the familiar environment and people. If you deny needs and aspects of yourself, those will assert themselves and break out eventually, possibly in ways that harm your confidence and will to change. Make a list, make a plan. Write out your feelings and insights. The key is to know yourself, what you want, and align all the parts. To be congruent. 

“Wherever you are is where it is at.”-unknown

I wonder what we will see shift next.