Stand Out of Time

This week, while preparing to teach over the weekend, I was reading T.S. Eliot poetry.  I first read T.S. Eliot when I was 15, over 40 years ago, as a teenager, exiled to the halls of high school.  I was captivated by his poetry, I felt sure he was on to something. T.S. Eliot knew something that I think, even then, I understood was essential to a meaningful life.  One thing he knew was that time did not exist in the way we think it does.

Time, in some ways, doesn’t exist at all.  It appears to, but simultaneously, disappears when we look forwards or back.  What has happened or what we think will happen seems to be happening now. Yet, in some ways, what we “know” only exists in the present, in what is happening now.  In Chinese medical terms, when we think about the past, we create dampness, a way to buffer, soften the impact of what is happening inside us. When we think about the future, we create heat, a way of trying to get on top of, ahead of what is happening inside us. These "pasts" and "futures" are happening inside us, in our minds. Our bodies remain in the present, subject to our minds, but still fully present despite our mind state.

If we can synchronize our minds and bodies (and YES, this is an advertisement for meditation practice), we can come fully into the present. When we come fully into the present, it is possible to heal both the past and the future, freeing not only ourselves but all those with whom we share experience.  One of the most amazing things about human consciousness is the capacity to use a present experience to enter deep into our psyche, deep into our own essence to retrieve our finest and most healing substance, our own presence.

In a way, when we come into our own presence, we stand out of time.  Fully present, we stand without ambition, without agenda, bearing witness to what is true for us in a given moment.  Our “reality” is that which is true, that which is known to us at a given time. It might include our knowing about our past or even our intimation of a possible future.  Presence vanquishes the need to belabor the past, or to control the future. Presence allows us the freedom to be fresh, new to our own experience. And one of the most common side effects of being fresh with ourselves is compassion, seeing and feeling exactly how things are.  

Here is a bit of what I was reading from Burnt Norton:

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable...

...Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

We can, in the end, stand out time, yet stand in relationship to that which it true. No past, no future, just your world and you.

Barefoot Medicine

This week I’ve been walking on the beach each day.  Walking barefoot at the edge of earth.  It is a living edge, a potent, changing edge, this place where heaven meets earth, where wind, water and sun flirt with each other endlessly. I walk barefoot so that I can feel the energy of the earth coming up through my feet.  The warmth of the earth goes right to my core.  Chinese medical thinking says that the sun radiates it's yang energy to the earth, which then we draw up through our connection to the earth and use in our bodies as warmth and strength.  Science calls this an electro-magnetic field, energy that you become influenced by and a part of if you are touching the earth.  Unfortunately, rubber-soled shoes do not conduct this energy.  Leather can conduct it, but man-made materials don’t.  So I walk barefoot. 

Barefoot is freedom, wildness and some kind of danger. Sharp rocks, broken shells, bits of glass all lurk in the sand and in the shallow waters.  One day, I crossed the whole beach at low tide, a long walk across many rocks and sand bars.  And I stepped on a bit of something that punctured my heel.  A sharp pain, but one that didn’t stop my journey because I was so enjoying the warmth of the day, the sound of the water, the stretch of sky and ocean that ran before me.  But, by the time I arrived back at home, my foot was sore.  Bleeding and sore. 

There is something about bleeding that is slowing and almost sweet.  The presence of blood says this is real, it honors the pain.  It could, of course, be alarming too.  I wasn’t alarmed but I was aware that I had crossed a line.  I had pushed on through the day without tending to my foot in a timely manner.  It was sore, calling for my attention, for a nice soaking and a careful bandaging.  Simple, this tending, and yet even this, holds some kind of larger medicine for me, a kind of larger attention that feels tender and raw, soft somehow.

There are so many edges these days.  So many are bleeding and sore.  Political edges, emotional edges, physical edges.  It is not as though edges weren’t always there, but it does seem that in the last few years things have gotten edgier.  We are more divided culturally, more disparate emotionally, financially and spiritually as a nation than any time in my lifetime. How can we care for these edges? How can we allow the bleeding to bring us to honor the pain, our pain and the pain of others? How can we “bandage” “tend” to the wound without pretending it will never happen again?

Truth is, pain is a fact of life.  Wounding is a fact of life.  When you walk barefoot, open, exposed, you are vulnerable.  Edges represent contact in a very certain way.  A contact that has potential for change, for engagement and also for pain, conflict.  In these times you are always walking some edge, some rough space of knowing and not knowing, of edges that speak to both excitement and fear.

Yet as a human, you can also be fearless, brave, willing to show your heart, show your wounds, claim your whole human self.  One of my first and most profound teachers in this life, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, has said that life can be like “licking honey from a razor blade.” And so it is.  We are called to live at the edge in our fullness, yet never forgetting the edge is there, feeling the sharpness, the vividness of our discomfort, the thrill of our own knowing as we navigate. 

I like to walk barefoot, something that I’ve always loved to do. I want to walk this way in the world, on the edge, careful yet open, brave, but a little bit wild, adventurous.  How do you want to walk in the world?

P.S.  for more about grounding through our feet and through the earth, check out Earthing.com. 

What Are You Cultivating?

These days it seems that gardening is a standard activity for many people.  Whether it be the half-acre plot or the potted herbs on the deck, everyone seems to have something growing.  What is it about watching something grow that is so attractive, so alluring? Why do we wish to take the wild life of plants and contain them, bring them to us, touch them, see them, often eat them?  But this week's central question is this:  what are you cultivating in you? 

   I mean this in so many ways.  What are you paying attention to? I don’t mean what you intend to pay attention to, but what do you actually pay attention to.  What takes your time, your energy, where do you make an investment?  This question can go so many places.  It can go to “I don’t have time to water the plants” to “ I want to weed the garden all day”.  It can go to “ I notice that I wake up anxious every day” to  “ I love riding my bike so much that I go out every Saturday and Sunday for long rides." Where, when and how do you make an investment?

If you try to grow plants, you know well that certain plants don’t grow in certain climates.  So, there is a factor that must be assessed in addition to your own willingness to cultivate.  What is your environment? What in your environment is a given, something you can’t or don’t wish to change? (Like your children, your partner, the house you love…) What is in the environment that could change to support you, support your vision? Because there is that, your vision, your aspiration and intention for this life.  What do you wish to do before you die?

Before you can embark on a productive process of envisioning a life for yourself, you often have to start with examining what it is you are already cultivating? What have you grown that may or may not match your intentions? What has grown in the places where you weren't paying attention? Where are you putting your energy and attention that you may or may not feel is a conscious choice? 

I love the word cultivating.  What are you choosing to notice, to nurture in yourself and your world? How do you care for the tender shoots that are new iterations of your life as you continue to move through the world? Even as some things are drying and fading, others are sprouting, demanding more water, more food, more light.  What are you bringing into the light of your attention? 

    These days, I have more questions than answers.  I am cultivating the questions, using them to fertilize, aerate the soil of my life.  Questions often seem to get beneath my standard stories, crack open the window of my heart and bring me closer to both myself and my world.  What about you?  Are there ways  you could align your vision of your life more closely with what you are willing and able to cultivate? 

Questions are one of the main tools I use to serve people both in relating with meditation practice and in relating with their health.  If you want to know more about working with me one to one, email me at josephine@josephinespilka.com