The famous and genius band, Rush, has a song entitled, "Time Stands Still."
The lyrics to this epic song are only understood when you have taken the time to fully understand the passage of time and the unavoidable ebb and flow of life.
There are those sections in our lives when we get that subconscious nudge to pay attention to the nuances of what we are experiencing. You get the feeling that whatever temporal bubble you are living within is brief, special, and worth remembering.
In my own life, I have been fortunate to have lived in many of these bubbles. Each of them unlike the others.
The pressure of that bubble is like a tube of toothpaste and you know that you will eventually be squeezed out of the tube, and on the other side of that contained experience, there is no returning back to the contained area you were just within. One must be utilized as the thing you are, in order to be of any value to others.
This is a stupid analogy but it's simple and (mostly) accurate. Toothpaste is not useful inside of the tube. Right? Right. It serves a purpose. If it is not used for that purpose, it dries out and ceases to be effective at doing what it does.
The darkest mental thought a person can have is thinking that there will never be another temporal bubble of magic in their lives.
At the root of this thinking is the erroneous modern view of aging. This dark thought contains within it the idea that nothing will ever be like it was during that special time you held so dear. This creates destructive powers of thought, which lead to even more destructive actions in a futile attempt to re-enter that "tube of toothpaste."
The classic "midlife crisis" episodes we hear about are a part of this error of the interpretation of time and its meaning as it relates to our lives in a linear fashion.
The mother who mentally breaks and does the unthinkable to her children is also related to this spiritual sickness of modern ideology related to aging and the "burden" of responsibility. Mind is the builder afterall, and the physical world we are in is the result of what our mind has built. Philosophers, mystics, religious scholars and prophets have all agreed upon that hierarchy of manifestation.
"As ye thinketh, so are you." Proverbs 23:7
Our study of the illnesses of body can be directly traced back to the conditions of mind. Yes, genetics play a factor in this journey we are on, but what if the mind is what activates certain propensities of specific genes to switch on, or switch off?
This obsession with only treating the physical body is a type of spiritual denial. By ignoring what we cannot perceive with our physical senses, we create weeds in the mind, which undoubtedly will create physical manifestations in our body and material environmental conditions. After all, we can only perceive .00001% of the electromagnetic spectrum. That means most of everything is not visible to us. Chew on that everlasting gobstopper for a while and you will come to the very logical conclusion that humanity really doesn't know shit about shit.
Our modern Western intellect has entirely dismissed the concept of integration of the whole Body. Body (uppercase) as in the Higher Body, Astral Body(or dreaming body) and the physical body. They are ONE. It begins at the top and manifests at the bottom which is the material/physical world.
Imagine the world and all that is within it being tethered to each other through invisible (to us) plasma that weaves in and out and through each living body. Trees, animals, water, earth and stone all connected through the infinite plasma threads creating connections that transcend our physical locality. This is also known as "spooky action at a distance," as Einstein once spoke of, or in more modern terminology, it would be "The Butterfly Effect," since a lot of you seem to really like that movie... maybe it will hit harder if I put it in film references. Whatever gets the point across- that's my goal.
We all enter these temporal spaces in our lives where it seems like these changing currents have no effect upon the experience we are within. We somehow managed to bottle lightning and we hold onto this jar of impossible odds like it is the existential life we have heard about in great stories from the past. Every person goes through a period of time or multiple events, that seem to be bigger than what we planned on in the limited scope of our imagination. It could be a day, a month or a year of this kind of thing but its duration does not dictate its powerful impact upon our psyche. It transforms us in an instant. No longer can we be who we were before this experience took place. In fact, the past version of ourselves exists in almost a blurry dreamlike state, "was that my life?"
These temporal periods in our lives aren't relegated to positive experiences exclusively. There are equal or greater time periods which are traumatic, jarring, and impossible to understand on any logical level. In trying to understand, we can be tempted to enter the realm of, "why me?" A better question to ask in that state of mind is, "why not me!." Perhaps you are best suited to take on such a difficult mission and perhaps it is something of notable honor to do so!
In my own experience with this phenomenon of the temporal bubble, I find that the biggest mistake one can make is believing it is indefinite or conversely believing it has to be a fleeting whim that is not worth considering. Either of those polarities are guaranteed to create suffering of the spirit. The people who believe nothing will change or that it is forever changed, are out of balance with the nature of life itself. The only guarantee we have that we can be certain of is change itself. We are not robots. Even the moon and stars go through their cycles of change. Why would we not be subject to cycles ourselves? If the earth itself is shifting and moving from time to time, why in hell wouldn't we be just as likely to shift or change our own life's topography?
A great deal of dogma has been nurtured within modern society regarding a correlation between being someone of integrity if you commit to some belief no matter what. We think in binary modalities. Right verses Left, Right verses Wrong, Good verses Evil, Angel verses Demon..it is this way or that way.
Binary thinking is the easy path to take. It is much more difficult to think in a 3 dimensional sphere than it is to think in terms of a flat circle divided in half.
Some things are evil, some things are divinely good, that is true, but how you reach those conclusions enough to KNOW it to be true takes introspection and understanding the seen and unseen aspects. A book of rules stating something is evil is not a good enough belief system to create the hero who would die defending that truth. Something much bigger is at work with someone who can face unspeakable danger or social flogging to stand within a belief unquestioning and that drive does not come from any book exclusively. One must KNOW it to be truth and to truly KNOW a thing, one must have lived within it, through it, and processed it fully within the construct of experience both within oneself and outside of oneself.
We ask time to stand still when it is going well, and when it isn't, we live waiting by the escape hatch and plead with time to hurry up and get on with it.
The hatch will open eventually, but it is unlikely to open if we cannot accept what situation we are currently having to contend with. Why are you so special that you should not have to wait for the hatch to open in its proper time? You will wait longer because of this mentality. A better way to deal with these uncomfortable waiting periods in life is to ask, "What can I learn from this uncomfortable dark room I'm in right now?" I don't have the answer for you, but I have been in this dark room recently and I had to rely on senses that I had not developed fully before that. I had to learn to be okay with not seeing the hatch door. I had to learn to trust that someone knew I was in there and would eventually crack open the hatch so I could at least face the correct direction and navigate accordingly. I imagined the other side of the hatch and would dream of a green rolling field with a rainbow, a bubbling brook and the songs of birds singing to the heavens. "Oh to exist there but even for a moment, would be light within my soul!" -Rumi
Nothing makes sense in our existence if you are trying to make sense of it by using someone else's map.
You must chart your own way forward in the way you know how to walk.
You can't go back, you can't use another's map, and you can't assume you know what is around the bend and would it matter even if you did? No. To stay in one place is to stop the journey of your soul's story... and you do have a story to tell.
Capture the moments that seem to transcend logical reason and know that they are worth remembering, but so are the times you spent in the darkness wondering when the hatch door would creak open.
In closing... keep your hiking boots on and keep going on your journey. The true north of your compass is to honor that journey, good or bad, lost or found, exciting or mundane, it is your quest, your hero's tale, and it is just as important to the universe as someone you may think is more important than you are. Look at all we have built and think about how the little bees have the power to continue our civilization and life itself within the ecosystem of earth. Does one bee's journey matter? It matters more than the billionaire investor or the CEO of a corporation, or the elections of government officials, the building of a new highway, etc... One little bee helps hold all of our ecosystem in balance. Without him, there would be no life for us to live.
If that much care has been taken to make sure that a little bee lives his own journey, how stupid are you to think that your story doesn't matter?
Whatever temporal bubble you end up in during the next growth spurt of your own journey, stay out of the mindset of it staying the way it is. Good or bad.. it will change as all things continue to change each moment of your journey.
Don't live someone else's map and when time does stand still in those magical bubbles of our lives, take from it only what you will need when you inevitably must continue into uncharted territory.
Thanks for reading.
