How fun it is to play with language and to see all the subtleties that can be discovered if we just pay a little bit of attention. We are so accustomed to viewing things from only one angle, but if we are able to come at things in a slightly different way, no telling how many diverse meanings can be found!
The other day I went out to the store to buy a memory stick for my computer, and while I was standing there looking at the advertising display, I had one of those odd little insights that comes now and again from out of the blue.
I have long known “memory sticks” to be data storage devices, but for some reason, in a moment of deflected attention, I saw the phrase in a completely new way. It was such a sudden and unexpected twist on a common phrase that I had to smile to myself. In that moment “memory stick” did not refer to data storage but to how our memory stays with us. We have a thought or experience, we then remember it as part of the flow of our lives, and then the memory sticks—-it stays with us and is held by the mind.
At one level, yes of course, it is great that we have this ability that is so painfully lacking in people with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. We can remember what occurred when we went to the store to buy the memory stick because the memory stuck, and we can remember many of the experiences we have had over the course of our lives because those memories stuck as well.
We have these memories that remain in our minds, and that is all well and good, but then usually something less useful happens: we apply judgments to those memories. We call some good and some bad and others are judged to be merely neutral.
From these judgments we often derive conclusions about ourselves and our overall experience: “Oh, yeah, so many of my relationships have failed. So, the next one should fail too. I have messed up so badly so many times; I am just a person who messes up,” or, “I have undergone so much, and I know that life is sad and unfair,” or conversely “That was so great for me, and it needs to happen again or something is wrong.” You get the picture: a past memory can be stuck in us so firmly that it shapes and influences our present experience. Now, surely that is one disadvantage of memory sticking.
But there is another way. What if we let the data flow on by without grabbing it or categorizing it? What a different life we would have: we would still have the gift of memory, but it would not be a held memory that clouds the perspective. From a vantage of childlike wonder we would see everything without prejudice and with wide open eyes. We would be free in a most fundamental way, because each moment of life would be filled with effortlessness and ease. Our intentions and actions would be unbiased and our way forward undistracted.
I am so very honored to be able to say that I have met people who demonstrate this choice. I know for sure that what I have described is not merely theoretical but is the actual lived expression of amazing people.
For all intents and purposes, these people look the same as the rest of us; they dress like us, speak like us and have normal human experiences like us, but what sets them apart is the choice that they make. It is a simple choice, one that all of us can make: to not get stuck in memories or anywhere else. Because of their clarity and simplicity, they may actually have prodigious powers of recall and can remember specific details of events long past, but they are not bound by any of it.
I know from my own experience what a joy it is to be in the presence of someone in whom memory is not stuck. Each moment is rich and profound for them, unfettered by confusion. When they see anyone or anything, they see only the shining essence. They are totally present and fully engaged with life in all its many manifestations. They bathe in a love that is ever present, and they willingly share that love with all the world. They are not distracted by any of the labels conjured up by memory. When they speak, it is with an authority that no position could provide.
Now, while I have described a type of person that is not yet often seen in the world, the freedom of choice to not be stuck in memory is available to all of us, with none excluded, and more and more it WILL be the choice that is made. For short moments, many times, over and over again, we can rely on our own native intelligence, acquiring experiences and memories as we move through life, but not allowing ourselves to be limited by any of them.
In this way, that memory stick in our pocket can carry a reminder of a way of life that will take us beyond memory.
Showing posts with label insight. Show all posts
Showing posts with label insight. Show all posts
Friday, December 9, 2011
Sunday, April 3, 2011
What’s Simply the Case, My Dear
I hope I can pull this off. I am very much moved to be intimately in touch with you, dear reader, whoever you may be. I have been sitting for many hours over the past few days just letting the intuitive muse weave her spell, as many notable ideas have swirled around and then receded. None of her offerings seemed entirely suited to the purpose; I could sense that an inspiration was present, but it had not taken any specific form. No matter; the waiting and watching are loads of fun, and nobody is any worse for the wear.
But then, most graciously, something did land and stick. This little bit of news I have is so self-evident, but yet so completely neglected by most of us most of the time, that its announcement has the potential to be quite an “ah-ha” experience for all of us! This apparently insignificant bit of news is actually not insignificant at all; it is a most crucial key to understanding the life that we live. It is our own experience each and every moment, but it passes by unnoticed.
This simple truth needs a few seconds of rested attention before it can lend its effect, so please easefully grant those few seconds, gentle reader. This gem, this incredible insight is simply: The here-and-now is all there is.
Surely, we might say, there is a continuity from past to present to future which confirms itself over and over in our experience. However, this conclusion is simply an oversight on our part. Yes, I know, this claim may raise a few doubts, but I would only ask for a bit of trust in this matter. Like with all new ideas, there needs to be some reflection and engagement with the notion before it can find a place.
In addition, it is helpful to employ an already recognized idea as an example to make the newly introduced idea a bit clearer. So, all of us have been to the movies, and when we look up on the screen, we think we are seeing an actual moving image, but we are not. We are seeing individual frames projected 24 times a second. Our eye is not quick enough to pick out the single frames, so as they rush past, the movement looks to be unbroken.
Our own experience, as a human being living a life that seems to pass in linear time, is one of movement from past to future with a fleeting stopover in the present. But could it be that it is all happening right now?
This cannot become clear if we are caught up in all our thoughts, emotions, sensations and experiences and if we take them all to be absolutely real. If, however, we can be a little bit at ease and not so pulled along by the demands of the thoughts and emotions, then things slowwwww downnnnn. If we are not always off chasing after our thoughts, and we choose over and over again to NOT go off chasing our thoughts, then something interesting happens. We start to see that things are not as they had appeared to be. What seemed to have a reality, a fixity and a certainty seems less substantial.
No one need accept this without experiencing it themselves. So, simply be still and watch, and do that over and over again as you feel moved to do so. Don’t insist that it be any particular way, and don’t seek anything. Just let things be as they are, watch as the whole pageant unfolds and see what happens.
It is not something that you do at any special time; just when you remember to do so, stop for a second and just LOOK. You could be very busy and engaged, but you will find that the looking can go on unimpeded, because that looking is always going on in the here-and-now, whether we acknowledge it or not.
So, this is my simple message. I am not giving you anything that you don’t already have. You don’t have to expend any effort to acquire something new. If more and more of us choose to slow down, even if outwardly we are required by circumstance to move very fast, the world we experience will be a different place. The alertness and clarity that are already present within us will become more and more obvious, and seemingly impossible things will become possible. Who knows what wonders we can bring about together!
But then, most graciously, something did land and stick. This little bit of news I have is so self-evident, but yet so completely neglected by most of us most of the time, that its announcement has the potential to be quite an “ah-ha” experience for all of us! This apparently insignificant bit of news is actually not insignificant at all; it is a most crucial key to understanding the life that we live. It is our own experience each and every moment, but it passes by unnoticed.
This simple truth needs a few seconds of rested attention before it can lend its effect, so please easefully grant those few seconds, gentle reader. This gem, this incredible insight is simply: The here-and-now is all there is.
Surely, we might say, there is a continuity from past to present to future which confirms itself over and over in our experience. However, this conclusion is simply an oversight on our part. Yes, I know, this claim may raise a few doubts, but I would only ask for a bit of trust in this matter. Like with all new ideas, there needs to be some reflection and engagement with the notion before it can find a place.
In addition, it is helpful to employ an already recognized idea as an example to make the newly introduced idea a bit clearer. So, all of us have been to the movies, and when we look up on the screen, we think we are seeing an actual moving image, but we are not. We are seeing individual frames projected 24 times a second. Our eye is not quick enough to pick out the single frames, so as they rush past, the movement looks to be unbroken.
Our own experience, as a human being living a life that seems to pass in linear time, is one of movement from past to future with a fleeting stopover in the present. But could it be that it is all happening right now?
This cannot become clear if we are caught up in all our thoughts, emotions, sensations and experiences and if we take them all to be absolutely real. If, however, we can be a little bit at ease and not so pulled along by the demands of the thoughts and emotions, then things slowwwww downnnnn. If we are not always off chasing after our thoughts, and we choose over and over again to NOT go off chasing our thoughts, then something interesting happens. We start to see that things are not as they had appeared to be. What seemed to have a reality, a fixity and a certainty seems less substantial.
No one need accept this without experiencing it themselves. So, simply be still and watch, and do that over and over again as you feel moved to do so. Don’t insist that it be any particular way, and don’t seek anything. Just let things be as they are, watch as the whole pageant unfolds and see what happens.
It is not something that you do at any special time; just when you remember to do so, stop for a second and just LOOK. You could be very busy and engaged, but you will find that the looking can go on unimpeded, because that looking is always going on in the here-and-now, whether we acknowledge it or not.
So, this is my simple message. I am not giving you anything that you don’t already have. You don’t have to expend any effort to acquire something new. If more and more of us choose to slow down, even if outwardly we are required by circumstance to move very fast, the world we experience will be a different place. The alertness and clarity that are already present within us will become more and more obvious, and seemingly impossible things will become possible. Who knows what wonders we can bring about together!
Saturday, February 12, 2011
From Berlin to Beijing to Tunis to Cairo—To Us
Who can forget the images?
After forty-five years of Communism and thirty years of not being able to walk freely through their own city, one exhilarating night, totally unexpectedly, the checkpoints of the Berlin Wall are thrown open and multitudes of euphoric East Berliners come flooding across to the West, passing freely by the befuddled guards who would have been obligated to shoot them only the day before.
A lone man, anonymous to this day, stands defiantly before a tank in Beijing and refuses to step aside. The tank tries to go around him, but the man repeatedly steps into its path, heedless of his own possible death. The whole world rejoices at this symbol of liberty and courage.
A poor, disadvantaged vegetable seller in Tunisia is insulted by a policewoman; he goes to the authorities for redress and finds none. His solitary protest against the injustice sets off peaceful demonstrations around the country that, in less than a month, will topple a dictator who has been in power for twenty-three years.
People in Egypt watch what is happening in Tunisia and ask the reasonable question, “Why not here?” They know the military, the government and the secret police will mobilize against them. They know that they are unarmed against the might of the state and that most likely some of them will die. They take to the streets anyway, calling for the peaceful removal of a strongman who has harshly and unjustly ruled their lives for thirty years. Some are arrested and tortured, others are shot where they stand in the streets, but still the crowds keep coming. Why? Because they crave the freedom and dignity that they know to be theirs.
We look on and are moved to joyful celebration for these triumphs of the human spirit. We identify with these people, even if they are far away in places that we will never go. We feel the kinship. “Yes, I know what they must be feeling. I would do the same. We are all in this together.”
Hurray and hurray again for these recurring emblems of courage. We are well served by gentle and not so gentle reminders of what is possible, and for some fortunate people in less troubled lands, these images lead to a searching glimpse into their own situation: “What is possible for me in my life?”
Now we come to the crucial point: what is possible in our own lives? Many of us may have felt fearful, doubtful, confused, repressed, depressed and disempowered, but not because of what some government has done to us, but because of what we have done to ourselves. We may have beaten ourselves up for our many perceived faults; we may have compared ourselves with others and doubted who and what we are; we may have been at the mercy of negative thoughts and emotions and believed that we would never be free of them. We may have bought in to all the ideas that said we were limited, sinful, unworthy and not good enough. We see others around us believing the same things, and we may conclude that this is just the way things are.
But the freedom that never left us and is always present beckons us at every moment, no matter what ideas we might have had about its loss. It is said that “hope springs eternal,” and that hope is ignited when we see examples in the lives of others, and in our own lives, that we can be free. This does take a bit of courage ….not unlike the courage of those in Berlin, Beijing, Tunisia and Egypt. It is the courage that says, “No matter what obstacles I see before me, I will not be deterred; I will not be limited; I will not be denied.”
This freedom that I am speaking of is the most basic of human rights — the birthright of all of us to know ourselves as we truly are. One moment at a time, over and over again, we quietly confirm that freedom for ourselves, and we persist, bravely, without wavering, until all hindrances have fallen away and our vision is clear. I wish this recognition of freedom for myself, I wish it for all of you who read these words, and I wish it for all citizens of the world.
After forty-five years of Communism and thirty years of not being able to walk freely through their own city, one exhilarating night, totally unexpectedly, the checkpoints of the Berlin Wall are thrown open and multitudes of euphoric East Berliners come flooding across to the West, passing freely by the befuddled guards who would have been obligated to shoot them only the day before.
A lone man, anonymous to this day, stands defiantly before a tank in Beijing and refuses to step aside. The tank tries to go around him, but the man repeatedly steps into its path, heedless of his own possible death. The whole world rejoices at this symbol of liberty and courage.
A poor, disadvantaged vegetable seller in Tunisia is insulted by a policewoman; he goes to the authorities for redress and finds none. His solitary protest against the injustice sets off peaceful demonstrations around the country that, in less than a month, will topple a dictator who has been in power for twenty-three years.
People in Egypt watch what is happening in Tunisia and ask the reasonable question, “Why not here?” They know the military, the government and the secret police will mobilize against them. They know that they are unarmed against the might of the state and that most likely some of them will die. They take to the streets anyway, calling for the peaceful removal of a strongman who has harshly and unjustly ruled their lives for thirty years. Some are arrested and tortured, others are shot where they stand in the streets, but still the crowds keep coming. Why? Because they crave the freedom and dignity that they know to be theirs.
We look on and are moved to joyful celebration for these triumphs of the human spirit. We identify with these people, even if they are far away in places that we will never go. We feel the kinship. “Yes, I know what they must be feeling. I would do the same. We are all in this together.”
Hurray and hurray again for these recurring emblems of courage. We are well served by gentle and not so gentle reminders of what is possible, and for some fortunate people in less troubled lands, these images lead to a searching glimpse into their own situation: “What is possible for me in my life?”
Now we come to the crucial point: what is possible in our own lives? Many of us may have felt fearful, doubtful, confused, repressed, depressed and disempowered, but not because of what some government has done to us, but because of what we have done to ourselves. We may have beaten ourselves up for our many perceived faults; we may have compared ourselves with others and doubted who and what we are; we may have been at the mercy of negative thoughts and emotions and believed that we would never be free of them. We may have bought in to all the ideas that said we were limited, sinful, unworthy and not good enough. We see others around us believing the same things, and we may conclude that this is just the way things are.
But the freedom that never left us and is always present beckons us at every moment, no matter what ideas we might have had about its loss. It is said that “hope springs eternal,” and that hope is ignited when we see examples in the lives of others, and in our own lives, that we can be free. This does take a bit of courage ….not unlike the courage of those in Berlin, Beijing, Tunisia and Egypt. It is the courage that says, “No matter what obstacles I see before me, I will not be deterred; I will not be limited; I will not be denied.”
This freedom that I am speaking of is the most basic of human rights — the birthright of all of us to know ourselves as we truly are. One moment at a time, over and over again, we quietly confirm that freedom for ourselves, and we persist, bravely, without wavering, until all hindrances have fallen away and our vision is clear. I wish this recognition of freedom for myself, I wish it for all of you who read these words, and I wish it for all citizens of the world.
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