Have
you ever noticed there are no straight lines in the universe? Everything has a
curve somewhere. Even that old ruler at school had a curve at the end, although
you may need a bedbug-sized perspective to see it! What we tend to do, however,
is try to straighten out the world. It comes from the impulse to control. We
think we can straighten out other people, gardeners think they can straighten
out other people garden, countries think they can straighten out other
countries, and sometimes our arrogance stretches as far as the weather, as we
attempt to manipulate its mysterious patterns. But the world just doesn’t work
like that. It works in curves, or to be more precise, cycles. The carbon cycle.
The water cycle, the economic cycle, the cyclical movements or orbiting planets
are all testimony to the idea that the world goes around, it doesn’t go along.
When
we are conditioned by linear thinking we can only see in straight lines. And if
we can’t we become frustrated. Yet even the world. In our heads moves in cycles
–thought, feeling, action, result, thought, feeling action, result. And most
mystically of all, time itself moves in straight lines or cycles? The day, the
year, the seasons are all cycles that define the rhythm of our lives. In these
cycles there is both, a sense of completion and completeness that sits
alongside and awareness of continuity. What is momentary sits comfortably
within they eternity of what is!
There
is a symmetrical beauty in the turning of a wheel, perfection and harmony in a
rhythm that turns back on itself to begin again. At any point on the surface of
the wheel of time the past is the future, the future is the past, and the
present a meeting of the two, when all is contained in one singular, infinite
moment called Now . Viewed from the center of the wheel the viewer is still,
while the wheel of time and change moves perfectly around. Leave this central
viewing point and the nature of the change within the movement of the wheel
attract attention, absorb energy and give rise to a different senses of reality . It is a
reality where constant change is simply the nature of life. After; some time;
in a changing reality, the peace and the all- encompassing awareness of the original
still point will be yearned for.
Some
sages have tried to teach us that there is only this “NOW’, and that living in
the present moment is the only way to fully experience the true beauty and
richness of life throughout time . They have tried to teach us that the only
way to perceive and hold an awareness of all time and all space is from that
point of stillness that we carry forever at the very centre of our
consciousness. Unfortunately, we have developed the tendency to get trapped in
our memories, or to be preoccupied with worrisome futures. Unable to ‘be still’
at our centre we have a habit of missing the present moment and , it could be
said, a large part or our real life. In the world we all share, reality is only
NOW and never in the past or in the future.
Being
mindful of ‘the moment’ and knowing the reality of NOW is the art of seeing that every moment has a value of its
own, even if the experience of that moment does not connect with any of our
ambitions, or goals, or mental preoccupations. Every Day contains infinite
opportunities when we can return to being ‘in the moment’. To spotlessly clean
a window, or sweep leaves in the backyard, is a physical experience that has
its own significance and nobility. This is one reason why monks of many faiths recognize
the spiritual value of routine agricultural work, such as digging, planting and
other activities that we might m\normally consider tedious and banal. They knew
that the time signified by the machines we call watches was nothing compared to
the timelessness that could be experienced
by being fully present in the moment, fully mindful of whatever action
is being performed. They knew that cycles of change into which we offer our
activity, were made of unlimited moments of eternity.
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