Tag Archives: time

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Past

The past is a piece of work. We have to have it, because without it nothing would work in our human existence, absolutely nothing. We wouldn’t be able to remember how to walk, talk, get dressed, do math or act like a complete idiot. It’s essential to have it, but the key to having a useful past in our lives is to understand the difference between having a past or being the past.

Most of humanity seems to subscribe to the latter, and it has interesting consequences to say the least. When we believe we are the past, it takes on a life of its own, and it seriously limits our abilities in life regarding ourselves and others. We will limit who we are, what we believe to be true of ourselves and what we are capable of based on ‘past experience.’ So in effect we believe that because something has happened in our lives once or even a few times, is equal to saying that it will happen the same way again, so why even bother with it. Welcome to limitation nation, because that’s where that is taking us.

When we become our past experiences in this way, we cut out possibilities for new experiences in our lives piece by piece, and end up in a life that is dictated by habits, rituals, and a particular way to do things, and to think of ourselves and other people. This is the place from which we say and think things that say I, you or life has always been that way. And then we make future predictions based on this information, of course assuming for the past to repeat itself. ‘My past experience with this (person) tells me that x is going to happen here’ is a popular phrase in this world. And by operating from this vantage point about myself and others I try to make life predictable and manageable, because at least I won’t be surprised. And when things actually turn out differently than expected we think of it as the exception to the rule, thus making sure that our past stays in place. We actually use the past to blind us from the present, because we see only past experience and not what is in front of us. And with this we begin to narrow down our ability to experience anything new in our lives, the past will make sure of this with its raised finger of insecurity and fear. ‘Don’t even think of trying this,’ it says, ‘you know what happened last time…’ or ‘What makes you think that you could ever do this?’ and on and on it goes.

Luckily there are those among us who don’t work that way, they in fact have a past, but never learned to become it, and by virtue of doing so remain open to the present and keep learning and finding out new things about themselves and the world on a daily basis. Great achievements in human history came about only because those people did not let their past get in the way of their own evolution and growth. They made mistakes, they failed, they stumbled and fell, but they used what they learned from those past experiences to get better, to improve upon it and to keep going by not repeating that which didn’t work and moving forward into an unknown future. Nothing can keep these people from succeeding. And you know who these people are? Every single one of us as a child when we learned how to achieve the seemingly impossible feat of walking. I’ll let you think about that for a moment.

As we grow older, we add ego identification into the mix, and – bam! – the past becomes us, the story takes over, and with it comes the weight of endless past experiences. As I think of this, it strikes me as absolutely amazing that we fall into this trap and keep teaching each other that this is the way to be human, that this is the only way to have a life – to be a product of the past, be that past and own it. And we don’t stop with ourselves, we then do it to all the people in our lives, how many times has a parent in history looked at their child and said to them that their ‘past experience with them’ tells them that they will fail, do the wrong thing and end up in the same place as before? If all I see is the past, then I cannot see the present and won’t see the person in front of me, but my past image of them instead.

What if we became like children again, and used the past to our advantage by trusting that our mind will do a wonderful job in using the past to let us function well in this world and protect us from harm? I don’t struggle to remember that a hot stove top is hot after finding out, I just do. We naturally trust ourselves with the past in uncountable ways every moment. It works brilliantly well, we don’t have to become the past for it to serve us, there is a natural selection process in place. It makes sure to pull the past data necessary for us to function very well in this world. It is unconscious and reliable, we don’t have to remember to do this. It’s like breathing. Having a past is not only essential, it is incredibly valuable. Let it do its job, stop messing with the process by thinking you are the process. None of us are, we are the creators of past, and we are forgetters of it as well. If we trust the process we don’t have to think about it and the past takes care of itself.

Living with the past is a great thing. It makes for a life of curiosity and discovery. It keeps us safe while letting us play in a world of possibilities. It’s a great servant. But it’s not who we are, unless we choose to believe so.

So with another year coming to an end I invite you to play with this, hang out with your past tonight, have a drink and share some memories. And then say thank you and send it on its merry way to be an aspect of you, and not who you are. And then begin again by creating a new past, one where learning becomes natural and you are not bound by your past, but supported by it. It may just lead to a great story to tell about the past in the future…

Happy New Year.

Cheers,

Ralf

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Once

Everything happens once. You will read these words only once. You will think about this very idea once. You breathe once. You see the people you love in your life once. You have every thought and feeling once. You only exist once.

But we don’t see it, it’s as if we do everything we can to hide from this fact. We are blessed and cursed with this ego, the keeper of our story, the one that needs to hang on to as much information as possible to make the idea of ‘me’ possible and life known and predictable. We form habitual thought patterns that give the illusion of things happening over and over again, with some variations, but at the end of the day, we think ‘here we go again’ a lot.

And as we do this, we lose our ability to see, to be present and experience the uniqueness of each moment as it occurs, because it gets hidden and muddled in that cloud of our thinking. Our lives turn into predictable and planned patterns, no matter if they are positive or negative, they are still patterns. Funny thing is, every single time I have a similar thought and repeat it, it is yet happening only once each time. Through all the repetition they stop feeling unique, but we have every thought and feeling once. Again and again. Stepping outside of the pattern thrusts us into the moment, and with that comes an instant ‘Vu Ja De,’ that feeling we get when we are sure that this has never happened before … and the realization that it will never happen again because it happens only once, right here and right now. Everything in existence exists only once. Every moment, every occurrence, every wisp of life in and out of form. Nothing and no thing repeats itself, ever. Literally.

At first this notion made me very sad and bummed me out, because this meant to me that life was utterly fleeting. If all happens only once, then there is nothing to hold on to after all, it happens once, never to happen again. Kinda depressing actually. But as these musings go in my life, once they show up, they don’t leave me alone until I pay attention and look a little further into it. This one was uncomfortable because it touches that last border, that veil in my life that I will never be able to fully understand and frankly stay away from: The fact of my own eventual departure from this plane of existence. Much like the character in my book, I struggle with this. And thinking about everything only existing once makes this much more real.

If everything only occurs once, then how can it exist? How can there be continuity in anything? How does anything grow? How can I exist? That doesn’t make sense to me, and yet I know somehow that this whole ‘once’ thing is true. Being in time is the answer. We live in a concept and state of time, though this is fluid at best, and it provides the succession of singular events, the whole ‘one thing happens after another’ idea. Cause and effect. Physics. It all builds on one another, and all of this is possible because we live within the concept of time. Without it, it all goes out the window. Stepping outside of time for a moment makes the moment unique, showing us that it is happening only now, once, never to return. Only through our ability to step back into time by remembering it, can it ‘return.’

Do you do or have anything in your life that makes you feel great? Maybe a favorite meal, drink, activity, person, any kind of circumstance? One of those things you love to do? We love that feeling and long for it, and thus we repeat the activity, but all we are doing is recreating the feeling, repeating the behavior to reproduce it again and again. In fact we are simply doing a lot of re-ing, and thus are simply giving ourselves a carbon copy. We are missing out on the onceness of it all. Nothing wrong with this, except it puts us in a state of varying degrees of blindness to the moment.

This has been with me for the past few weeks, and by allowing it into my awareness, I have noticed more around me. It started by thinking about everything happening once, which led to some anxiety at first because it also meant that it may be the last time I got to experience whatever I was experiencing at the moment, but slowly it has transformed into more of a wonder about life. I find myself being struck by the onceness of a taste, a thought, a feeling, and I see that nothing repeats itself, except my thought about it. My mind has become a little quieter so that I can pay better attention. It is sad and awe inspiring at the same time. It all happens only once.

Play with this yourself and try it on for size. What if this is true and everything happens only once? Hold this idea in your mind during your next meal, conversation, bike ride, interaction with anyone, ‘this is only happening once, never again.’ You may just be so glad that you got to be around while it was happening.

Cheers,

Ralf

 

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Coming and Going

The past seven days have been quite eventful around here. My favorite aunt passed away and one of my best friends welcomed a beautiful baby daughter into the world. Wow. Funny enough, this made me reflect on all the coming and going that is going on all around us, all the time.

My aunt, who became my aunt through my marriage to my amazing bride, was one of my favorite people. She had already suffered from MS for decades when I met her, and she was reduced to control of her left arm and hand, and that in limited fashion. But that was the only limitation that existed in this remarkable woman, for she was working on transcending the limitations of the human body. That is how I experienced her. When she ended up bed ridden for months because of some medical complications, I ended up going to her house weekly to read books to her and have the most amazing conversations about her life, our shared philosophy on things and what it may or may not be all about. This was an incredible time for me, and I hope for her as well. The first time one of the staff nurses came to check on her when I was there, she introduced me as her nephew, as if I had always been. It touched me so much, how she so naturally just thought of me that way and allowed me into her life. It reminded me that at the end of the day we are all human, all on the same planet, all mortal and doing this thing called life. And she chose happiness over self-pity or depression any day. Given her circumstances, this was a wonderful thing for her to choose, and it was not always easy of course.

Many times we would talk about how life was an inside-out affair and that she often would visit places in her mind and go on trips to places of and not of this earth, contemplating life and what may be beyond. She would tell me that doing this was giving her a sense of peace and acceptance of her condition, and a sense and experience of freedom at the same time. She told me so many stories of her childhood and pre-MS life, but they were never filled with regret or bitterness because that was lost. And she always talked about what MS had given her, and she would always say one thing: ‘MS showed me the deep and true love that my husband has (had) for me.’ I will leave it at that.

Within a week of her passing, one of my best friends welcomed a baby girl into his life. This is a man of great heart and compassion, who has loved our little girl since her birth in the sweetest way, and I knew then that he had no idea what would happen to him and his capacity to feel love once he had his own child. When I talked to him yesterday morning, he was in tears of joy in the face of such overwhelming love, we both ended up crying. One second your child is but an idea or concept, and the very next second, it is here, on earth, and we are in its presence. There is a purity of presence in a newborn that transcends all language and concepts and can only be felt. It is the most amazing, wonderful and awe inspiring feeling a human being can feel, I believe. It changes you instantly and completely, and for the rest of your life. And you never want to be without it again. I know that my friend is feeling this right now as well. At first our mind cannot process it, because it is outside of our experience, outside of thought. Outside of the ego identification, that is what makes it so powerful.

Only a parent can fully relate to this particular experience of love of course, but any and all human beings have the built in capacity for this. There never has been or ever will be a human being that is not born in the same state of utter perfection and purity of feeling. We all start out this way, and thus we all know what this state is like, whether we are conscious of it or not. That is reassuring to me. The world is in such a mess, and sometimes these days I feel like an alien visiting earth and observing the level of insanity that people engage in is beyond me, but at the same time I know I am part of it, I am here and I chose and choose to be here. So I vow to do my best to be.

We all come, and we all go. My aunt went to where my friend’s little girl just arrived from. And short of a belief that we all may have about what that ‘somewhere’ may look like or be, we can agree that we come out of someness and return to it at some point. Lest we forget that we are eternally temporary. All of us. Every thing. We tend to remember this during times of coming and going, also known as birth and death, but then we move right back into our daily routine of habitual patterns that are but a mere echo of those feelings of awe and humility in light of the impermanence that is present in those moments. Our lives and planet would be greatly altered if we all decided to live in awareness of this rather than turning from it as we usually do. It’s a gift to be in the presence of those that are coming and those that are going.

So I invite you to spend the rest of just today to look at yourself and all around you like an alien visitor to the planet. Look at your own body as the vehicle you get to use during your visit here, and dare to think about the fact that your departure is always imminent. You may be asked to board your flight back home at any moment. Use the time you have, use it to love, to laugh and enjoy your stay here, for it could be over at any moment.

Goodbye Aunt Ruth, and welcome Maya.

Cheers,

Ralf

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Momentness

I am not sure whether this word exists or not, but in any case I think it should. To me it describes the feeling of being here more accurately than the word ‘now.’

We learn to live in a world of ‘thenness’ very early on in our lives. We do not start out this way though. It is not how we show up. We start out completely living in the present moment with no thought to the previous or next moment. Have you ever watched a baby crying and upset only to smile and beam, literally the next second? That is what I am talking about here. There is a complete commitment to the moment. It’s a great reminder of how we all begin in our human journey. Obviously we learn stuff along the way, we have to in order to live a functional life, no question. But instead of simply learning things and relying on the fact that we will utilize this knowledge on a need to know basis, we go ahead and turn all that we learned into us. We become the things we learn. When we do this, we immediately add weight to it. I think that this is not only figuratively speaking, but very real. As we ‘take on’ the things we learn and make them about us, we get heavier. We can see this in people, too. Have you ever met someone that seemed heavy, that felt as though they are carrying something around with them? Chances are that they are, and that they are full of thoughts about themselves and their lives. They are caught in time, and being caught in time means that we hold on to eternally repetitive thought patterns.

When we take on the things we learn in this way, this repetitive thinking about ourselves is all we have. That leads to a life almost exclusively lived in the past or the future. It has to, because all we see and experience is a thinking that is either looking at what’s ahead or what’s behind. People will argue to no end that this is not only normal, but absolutely necessary. How could you live without thinking about the future and the past? How could you exist or live a life? These questions make a lot of sense, but they are asked from the vantage point of ego identification. It’s all about the perspective. When we believe to be our past and future and thus the story they create, we may not exist outside of this construct. For if I am not the story, who or what am I? Pretty much nothing. There is nothing left. And from this perspective this is absolutely true. Without the reference points of a personal past and future I cannot exist.

But is that really true? What about people who suffer from partial amnesia, the kind where they remember language, motor function, and all the essential functions of a human being, but they cannot remember details of their past lives (their stories)? They exist, don’t they? If anything they often have a childlike quality about them, a certain lightness, precisely because they are not carrying around years of memories that create, define and limit them. Much like small babies. They very much exist. As a matter of fact, they exist with such intensity if you will that people have a hard time resisting them and their unbounded presence and joy. This is powerful stuff. It’s the stuff of momentness. We are all drawn to this, we try to bring it into our lives as much as we can. We try to create situations in our lives to make this happen. We all have hobbies, activities and things we do in order to put ourselves into momentness. It may be a vacation, it may be hanging out with friends, playing a sport, going shopping, being alone, eating, cooking, you name it. All of these attempts of ‘unplugging’ in whatever small way in every day are aimed at creating a respite from the maelstrom of our constant thinking about the past and the future. We need a break from it. But this break is only necessary as long as we choose to live in time or our thinking.

I have heard many stories of people who had faced death in one way or another and afterwards talk about a deep shift in their perspective on things. They often feel much calmer in their everyday lives, don’t worry much and have very little concern about the past or future. They have stepped outside of their time bound story and right into momentness. Only, I used to think that one had to go through an experience like this to be able to have this change. You had to have faced death to qualify. Now I know that this is not true. All it takes is a shift in perspective and a choice. A moment-to-moment choice for momentness. I admit that in the beginning this felt a bit fatalistic if not morbid. To allow myself to think that every single time I said goodbye to my wife could be the last. That waking up every morning was not a given. That talking to my family and friends was a singular event that may never be repeated. In fact this is a wonderful feeling once we drop the above ideas about this. This is what happens to people who skipped death. This is momentness. It is the awareness of the fact that everything is absolutely temporary and only given the appearance of permanence through our own repetitive thinking. Seeing this not only keeps us in existence, it also creates a life of vibrance, gratitude and joy, knowing that it can end in this form at any time. This is not depressing, it is light and affirming. The moment is all there is, so we may as well not miss it by thinking ourselves out of it incessantly.

The next time you find yourself in a funk or situation that has you caught in time, see if you can watch your thoughts that are giving you the experience you are having. This is the doorway into the moment. By becoming present to our thinking about and in time, we get to be here in the moment, and enjoy a dose of momentness. Beauty is, we never run out of them. Moments that is.

Cheers,

Ralf

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About

As we are coming to the close of another year, the idea of resolutions comes up a lot. It feels good to look back at what has been and to look ahead to what will be, what the new year may be about. Why is that?

I find that when we are fully in ego identification that every thought we have should be about something, it should have a reason to exist, at the very least it needs to mean something. The ego abhors idle or meaningless thinking. Since in this state of identification everything is about me, me, me, it’s always about something that somehow relates to me and my needs. This is serious business that requires my attention, because by having these thoughts and expressing them, I make myself known to the world. Without doing this, I would not exist, the ego tells us. By doing so it operates under the guise of fear, the fear that we may not exist without having all these thoughts about ourselves and the world. After all, ‘I think, therefore I am.’

This fearful thinking can show up in all kinds of forms, but it always has at its core the idea of disappearance without it. It does not matter what the content or flavor of my thinking may be, it is designed to make the experience of me more real. I may be scared, hopeful, depressed, arrogant, happy or sad, as long as my thinking happens from an ego identified perspective, it has to be about something. That is very limited and tiring thinking. It never lets me rest. The project of me is a 24/7 affair after all, and it is the most important project we can undertake. If there ever is a moment of idle thinking or even no particular thought, it may feel nice for a moment, like taking a rest, but then we quickly turn back to the business of thinking about something meaningful.

This type of thinking always has to be about the past or the future, as usual all of this has to be time bound and focused. And at the end of a year it makes perfect sense to reminisce about the past twelve months and look forward to the next twelve. But when we are our ego, the future cannot be unknown, because that feels uncontrollable. What if we didn’t do that? What if we allowed ourselves not to have any particular thoughts about the future? In ego identification this is at the very least a weird idea and at worst frightening.

But what will happen if we simply say to the future, ‘I don’t know you and I have no reason to know you?’ That is what is actually going on of course. We have no idea what the future is, or rather, that is actually all we have, an idea. Why not simply be now and here instead of nowhere, which is what it feels like to the ego when we don’t have an idea about the future. Let us be open, trust that our thinking will serve us in the best possible way given the situation. Let’s trust that we will have the right ideas at the right time, the inspiration to create something new, and the means to put it all together in the perfect way. That our thinking naturally shows up in the most meaningful and appropriate way given the situation, that it will do its job and move on. What would life be like?

Let’s welcome the new year without an agenda, a goal, or a fear about the future. Let’s instead welcome the year as an unknown, something that has no meaning yet and something that will unfold in whatever way we choose. Let’s be willing to say “I have no idea what will be.’ And because of that, anything is possible.

Cheers,

Ralf

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Worry

Worry is the sticky glue of the mind.

It seems like such a good idea on the surface, it seems to say that I care about someone or something, otherwise I wouldn’t worry about it. Worry can only be focused on the future or the past, but never the present. I worry in the present, but the second I do, I am taken out of the present to thinking about something in the future or the past. When we worry, we are wondering about an undesirable outcome. It may be about the past, where we wonder whether something that has happened may yet have a negative impact on our lives, or about the future, where we wonder about something that has not occurred yet. Doesn’t it actually sound a little goofy just reading that?

Worry comes along as this reasonable emotion, because it is based on the idea of caring. We worry about each other, about our possessions, about the weather, the economy, the cable guy coming, etc. The list is literally endless and as creative as there are people on this planet. And it sticks in our minds like glue. Worry seems really hard to get rid of. One way is to convince ourselves that things are going to turn out alright somehow, which is hope. But hope is the flip side of worry and thus really no better. It feels better, but it’s made up of the same stuff as worry, which is fear. So when we replace worry with hope, we are simply refocusing our energy to a more positive emotion, but the underlying emotion is still just as fearful. For I am afraid of the future not working out the way I would like it to, or I am afraid that what I hope for may not happen. Not a nice place to be.

When we worry or hope, we are lost in time, looking to the past or future, which we will never experience because they are both not now. And the only ‘time’ we exist is now. We can worry only now, and can hope only now. That is all there is. When we begin to see that, the glue in our mind begins to dissolve. We get to choose whether we keep sniffing the glue of our worried or hopeful minds or not.

There is nothing to worry about or hope for when we are present. The present is a space where worry, hope, or any time bound emotional concept cannot exist. Have you ever been in a moment of complete contentment? The kind of moment when there was nothing in particular on your mind? When the only ‘thing’ on your mind was a feeling of deep and quiet joy? We all have had moments like this, and they are not connected to any particular situation or event, they can show up anytime and anyplace, but they have this feeling to them. If you have indeed had a moment like this before, then you have been fully present and experienced a moment without fear. And without fear there is no worry about anything, and nothing to have to hope for, simply because at that moment, life is perfect. It is a state of presence.

That is all being present is, a feeling. But that is also ALL. Are you willing to stop sniffing the glue?

Cheers,

Ralf

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Eternally temporary

I went to my wife’s former middle school today to spend some time with the kids. Before I went she reminded me that she used to roam those halls a mere 21 years ago. So as I roamed the halls I was trying to imagine her running around between classes, chatting with her girlfriends, all wide eyed about her unknown future and her life ahead of her. Now in her mid-thirties, I know that most people would agree that she still has her life ahead of her, as I am sure a 100 year old might say that to a 70 year old. But what if we all had a life expectancy of 150 years? How would that change the way we looked at our lives at 65? We would ‘expect’ to barely have gone past the first third of our life. Would we still retire then? Would we maybe take a break from work for a couple of decades only to start another career? Would we wait with having kids until we’re in our fifties? Think about how everything would change with that shifted expectation in mind.

At the same time, we could always die ‘prematurely,’ just as we do now. We could sit and wonder about where time has gone by the time we’re 140 and in different ways prepare for the impending ‘end.’ So in a way nothing would change. I think that’s very human of us. We are the only beings we know about who can think about themselves in a fully conscious way and ask ourselves who we are, why we’re here and what it’s all about. With that comes our very acute sense and obsession with time. We know that time is relative – ten minutes waiting for bad news feels like an hour, while spending an hour with a loved one can feel like a second – but we never really consider how incredible that very difference is.

Nothing lasts. Absolutely nothing. Countless processes are at work in our bodies at any moment, as there are countless more on the planet. Things coming and going all the time. Any thought we have comes and goes in a flash, and unless we could remember to repeat a thought, we would remain like babies. So this is a good thing, don’t get me wrong, but it happens automatically and we don’t have to do anything to be able to function very well as a human being. Where it gets challenging is when we get lost in time and try to create a sense of permanence around what we call ‘me’ to feel more real. You know, like telling stories with old friends about the ‘good old days,’ looking at pictures from past adventures, thinking about the things we have achieved, etc. Then we add to this ideas about our future, things we want to achieve, places we want to go, things we want for ourselves and others. All of this is inherently done to make ourselves feel more real, more permanent. It’s because we live our lives solely within the time bound confines of birth-to-death. In this model that past and the future is what defines us, what makes us unique. Without the past and future we would not exist, because there would be no reference point, no ‘content’ to our lives.

But what if we lived our lives in the relativity of time? What would change? Think about that. We would be present-bound, not time-bound. We would still have memories of the past and thoughts about the future, but we wouldn’t be them. We would be here and now, period. Our ability to remember things would simply enable us to live our life, but they would not be us. Time would become as immaterial to us as it truly is. There is a lot of freedom in that. Ask any older person who is deeply content and happy, how they feel about time. I think in their own words they will tell you that nothing is permanent, and that all they enjoy is the moment. Nothing is eternal. Everything is temporary. It’s all eternally temporary.

Depending on how you live your life, that can be deeply disconcerting or deeply reassuring.

Cheers,

Ralf