Out of Time Into Presence

(This article in a deep-dive conversation format, courtesy of Notebooklm follows)

Have you ever felt a deep sense that you have something valuable to share but can’t find the words to express it? Sensory experiences often highlight the limitations of language. Take the taste of a peach, for example. No matter how astute and nuanced one might attempt to convey its essence to someone who has never tasted a peach, words will ultimately fail to capture the inner experience.

This is my conundrum today, as I feel compelled to share a sense of well-being that I’ve been enjoying for several months now. This compulsion to share my sense of equanimity likely stems from decades of writing about spiritual life, with its aim to cultivate a pervasive sense of happiness and peace. Yet now that my current inner space feels genuinely content, I grapple with the paradox of wanting to share while feeling seemingly unable to do so. Such a “failure to communicate” would typically deter most writers from attempting to convey but somehow, I feel compelled to continue. So here goes.

I’ve asked my muse (the one who typically shows up during these writing attempts and deserves all the credit for whatever words are found worthy and helpful) and the answer that came back is both profound and frustrating. The muse tells me that what I’m experiencing these days, that seems like an oasis of happiness, amidst the ardor of daily living, has no objective qualities. Therefore, lacking objective qualities this “experience” defies description.

I have heard the term “causeless joy” in spiritual circles. This perhaps comes closest to putting words on what is honestly ineffable. But for purposes of this article let’s leave it with that moniker. It will do. Perhaps more importantly, allow me to share what seems to be the cause or the underpinnings of this sense of well-being.

First and foremost, is self-awareness. More and more these days I have turned the scope of attention around from getting caught up with what’s happening “out there” in life to noticing and apprehending the nature of the inner landscape. I’ll tell you it took quite a while for me to manage this reversal of attention. Humans love drama. What’s going on and why is the compelling narrative. Couple that with a“me” character and how I’m doing vis-à-vis the events and circumstances, and one finds themselves immersed in the movie of life. And not just the current scene that grabs our attention but the imagined, feared, or projected future and the meaning-making that goes with all that mental activity.

Am I saying I don’t do any of this mental imagining and catastrophizing? No. But it’s clearly much less. And much less focus on the story of my life leaves the capacity for simply noticing the space of simply being. I’m still watching the movie (events unfolding) but I’m simultaneously aware of the screen (conscious awareness) that is the foundation of knowing. In some moments when drama is only minimally present, I can slip into full awareness of being. Here I find no problems. In this milieu, there are no competing or conflicting energies. Simply “I am-ness” and “Isness.“ This is the “screen” upon which the dramas are observed, yet in the same way that a TV screen is not affected by the characters or the happenings in the movie, the screen of awareness remains unperturbed, untouched, and unstained. When attention rests in awareness I am out of time into Presence. I eschew thoughts of myself as much as possible. More and more I see the fallacy of a personal me, a separate self. The boundaries of awareness can’t be found, no beginning or ending can be ascertained so how can there be a finite separate self? Though such finiteness applies to the body it doesn’t apply to the I am that I am.

What has occurred is a redemption of the promise of all the spiritual teachings and sages that at our core we are invulnerable to the vicissitudes of life. Stuff still happens but there is a pervading sense of equanimity (like the screen) in the background that remains unchanged by outer events, and most profoundly, remains as the “peace that passeth understanding.” Perhaps most remarkable and starkly evident of all is that this realization, that I have been seeking all these years, has been here, within me, all along.

Namaste,

Rev Larry

A Deep-dive conversation of this article created by NotebookLM