A Tangible Now

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘News’ – Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis, 1905 – WikiArt

Everything that we truly have is now. In the unplanned. In the unprojected. Only we have to be very still to see it, to comprehend that truth. Not busy. To be busy is to plan, project, think, believe, fear, suffer. All these can never experience the now. For the sufferer and the believer have left the still, untouched, virgin presence of the now to venture into the past or the future. And in doing so, have somewhat died. They have stopped being. The reason for this is that being can only thrive in and as itself. That’s what makes it eternal, infinite, unformed, whole. To move from it, to have the slightest impulse away from it, is to trade being for becoming, eternity for time, infinity for limitation, and wholeness for separation. This is what makes the now into an unknown, unlived passage between two ideas: ‘that which was’, and ‘that which will be’. Both being some phantoms that we have invented to make one single thought about ourself viable. A thought that has separated itself from the true reality of being. A thought whose only purpose is to bridge ‘that which was’ to ‘that which will be’, and whose fate is to forever seek in the future its lost happiness. We are enclosed in our own fake self and reality. And the now has been lost, replaced by time and becoming. And the peace of being has been buried, replaced by a self that thinks itself separate and lacking, therefore suffering.

So this is the new world we have invented for ourself. This is the new situation. We are now looking to possess, attain, and reach. The now has been made into something negligible, not worth anything, a mere ‘obligatory passage’. We have killed the wide expanse of the now, and have jumped into a train of thoughts. We have deserted vastness and freedom for the prison of a mind. We have made ourselves merchants, mere traders of objects with an idea in view. Our feelings, our body, our sense perceptions, have come to define us. We have come to believe that we are what we are not. And we have, in consequence, become blind to what we truly are. We live in a fantasised world, forever running and rushing between beliefs and concepts, filling the space of being until it has become indiscernible, crowding the now with the whole paraphernalia of time. This is how the now is trampled. This is how its noblesse is sullied over and over again. For the loss of the now is our loss. It is therefore important, and some vital enterprise, to return to the now its forgotten grandeur, and to restitute its position at the very centre of our lives.

The now is not a fleeting moment in time, but the solid presence of the eternal. It cannot be known as an object — which would make it finite, situated, graspable — but as the very being of the very nature of ourself. The now is made of our presence. We are filled with it. The now is foundational. It is the unseen ground and walls of our being. The now isn’t one of the innumerable bricks of time. But time is refracted in the now as one of its many possibilities. The now is the space in which the whole of life unfolds its many mysteries. And its presence cannot be dissociated from that which we are in essence. We can try as we may, we will never be ‘not now’. Our being is forever stretched in and as the eternal and unlimited field of the now, curling up its true body in and as the own, ungraspable body of the now. We will never experience the now as ticking in our life at regular intervals. For it is the very life that we are made of and that refracts itself as a thousand experiences. It is hosting ourself, lending its structure to the very structure of our being. It can be felt as the tangible aspect of the intangibility of time. It is the only thing we have. It is had in us before even the concept of time appears, let alone the past and the future; let alone the body and the world; let alone thoughts, feelings, and the sense perceptions that give our many experiences their contours and qualities. Time is the now having limited itself to accommodate the limitations of thought. And space is the now having limited itself to accommodate the limitations of the world as sense perceptions. Behind all that is fleeting and overwhelming in the flow of experience, ‘now’ is the only solid, peaceful, tangible ground we have.

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Text by Alain Joly

Painting by Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis (1875-1911)

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Website:
– Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis (Wikipedia)

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Other ‘Reveries’ from the blog…

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A Disencumbered Now

Posted on by Alain Joly

Expecting anything from the next moment will make you leave the present moment. Holding on to anything that took place in a past moment is a hindrance. It will curb your ecstasy. It will dampen your freedom. It is like the surging of time in a timeless moment. It will throw a cold. Now is always timeless. Otherwise now is not now anymore. Now then mingles itself with thoughts of past events, and with expectations. It is sullied. Eternity is lost, replaced by the movement of separation. Stillness is disturbed, transformed into endless seeking. Now is being encumbered with time. And time is nothing but the main constituent of our limited, illusory, suffering self.

The present moment can never be a moment. It would make it of time. It would make it last. Nothing lasts in the field of the now — which is pristine being. Something that lasts is already stained. But presence is only shining in purity. It is an empty container, even when it is full to the brim with multiple appearances. Presence is unencumbered by anything past. It doesn’t need to accumulate. It doesn’t need to expect, hope, project, prepare. How do you accumulate in fullness? How do you prepare for the inconceivable? How do you expect the unanticipated? How do you hope for the unexpected? Presence is like a pure diamond. Any impurity, the slightest stain, will lower its intrinsic power and value. For the diamond of being needs clarity. This is how it takes ever more light. The diamond of presence has to be unadulterated. This is how it is made genuine and innocent. Disencumber the now. Unload it from anything that is coming from thought, that finds its origin in the memories of the past and the images of the future, and expresses itself as fear and lack. Your apparent self is made of such thoughts and images, with their concomitant feelings. They are like the soldiers of the separate self’s army. Take a time off from these. Stop indulging in them. Don’t be fooled and misguided by them. You are not made of the past or the future. These are only the now in disguise. Now is who you truly are. Now is all there is. So go for the now. Allow it to shine freely. Disencumbered.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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Other ‘Ways of Being‘ from the blog…

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The Shrug

Posted on by Alain Joly

Went for a walk this morning, a little tired,
A little weary, to taste of the autumn air,
And watch the coloured wood against
The sparkling snow mountain caps.
Below the village along the narrow valley,
The path led to clean fields, a clearing;
Two houses stood there, farms with
Cows and hens and cats, a garden there
Deliciously abandoned for winter is coming.
Furtive escapes, lazy grazing, slow wanderings,
Countless hideouts — a children’s paradise.
I saw two young men working,
And I stood there watching;
Tasting…

Then simple men with simple features
Came towards me with wondering eyes;
We exchanged words, they were smiling.
In the silence offered to me then,
I promptly dreamt of living here:
Sitting all morning on those steep slopes,
To think, and keep an eye on the herd,
Twig in my mouth contemplating sceneries,
Strong legs, strong hands, a little nap,
I’d learn simple work for simple ends,
I’d give my heart to this beautiful piece of land 
And those two young men smiling at me.
Addressing them, I said: I like this place.
They shrugged.

So they did it again, my playful thoughts —
To imagine another place, another deed,
To bend the exquisiteness of the now
And squeeze it into a stretch of time, 
Another mirage for my needy self.
The new is good at stirring our imagination
And digging out pleasure that would not last
When coming down day after day with milking cows.
I clung to the marvellous autumn colours for help. 
They told me of all that rests peacefully
Behind the field of thoughts, the claws of time.
They told me that there is a happiness and a beauty 
Always — when you’re resting as rests the land
Or the clear sky, the mountain caps.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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Suggestion:
– Voices from Silence (other poems from the blog)

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A Frame for Life

Posted on by Alain Joly
‘Sunset’ – Claude Monet, 1880 – WikiArt

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“The Soul, which is eternal Spirit,
Standeth above Time’s sovranty:
Already in this present world
She liveth in Eternity.”
~ Angelus Silesisius

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There seems to be an inescapable canvas that allows our life to take place and unfold in the world. This is the concept of time and space. It is the frame in which our seeming existence can spread its tentacles in every directions of our four dimensional reality. At least this is what thought tells us. This is our representation of reality. But is that truly so? 

Time seems to work vertically, allowing experiences and events to unfold one after the other, in sequences, allowing for birth and death, progress and becoming. It is intimately related to space, which works more horizontally, allowing objects and selves to move in different directions and places. And of course, time and space require that things and selves in the world are made out of matter and have all a separate, independent existence. Things and selves are like the set and actors on the stage of life, the never ending search for happiness being the script or the story, space being the place of the representation, and time the duration of the play that allows the story to unfold before the audience. As for the latter, it is composed of us all. We are all watching the representation of our existence.

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An inquiring journey into the concepts of time and space… (READ MORE…)

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