February dreamtime

What is time all about? How do we move into a future that we cannot imagine? What is the secret of the past?

I heard a story about a way of seeing time, It came from a book written by an explorer, who some of you may recall I have written about before; Erling Kagge.

In the book "Walking, one step at a time" he talks about a story he picked up on his travels, where the people in a certain hidden place, treat time differently from everyone else, they use the flow of a stream as an analogy to describe this way of thinking:

When you look downstream, are you looking at the past or the future?
They are looking at what has passed before him, and therefore the past.
As they look upstream at the water coming out of nowhere, the future is shooting at them unpredictably from between the rocks.
"What about the present?"
Well, look down at the stream passing you and you'll miss the present, because it is neither future nor past, and is confusingly but undeniably now- always. So time never has a form to hold onto, it is literally always letting go.
Some might say this is our greatest teacher.
We can be the owners of the present because we know nothing else truly exists.
The past is coloured by our perceptions and conditions, and the future is a constant surprise despite all our desires and plans to control it.
So often it is feeling that guides us, "Gut instinct" where on earth did that come from? Its like some kind of secret guide, a hint with no clues! but is definitely there.

This photo reminds me that the stream analogy isn't the only one I have come across. There is an Island somewhere where they see the past behind them, as if they were sitting in the back of a pickup and seeing road disappear behind the vehicle; They have their backs to the future, the unknown and unknowable.

Ok, so we could get pretty dark and ponderous about this, but as the Dalai Llama said:

"There are only two days in the year that nothing can be done. One is called Yesterday and the other is called Tomorrow. Today is the right day to Love, Believe, Do and mostly Live".

So simple! So as time crawls through the muddy puddles and the occasional bright shards of sunlight of February, some of us are dutifully bowing our heads toward the puddles, and some are lifting their head deliberately to the rain, the sun, the weather. Opening up to the possibility that this is real holy water, straight from the source- nature itself, personalised by your perspective, every drop unique, just like us all.

So how do we move into a future that is so unknown? well, we never will, it's already here. Anticipation is a really stressful concept, (right?!)  it suggests expectations, it hints at a slightly naive assumption that things will work out the way we planned.
Well, I like making plans, but I do so (usually) with a healthy plan b and plan c. One of those will be something to do with travel insurance I suspect because those plans are the cushioning for if or when things fall apart, because they always do, as history will tell us over an over again. So maybe there is also a plan Z, which is the unspoken instinctive response to an unexpected change? this Z isn't something you plan, but you can practice for by making little shifts in your routines, easing little changes into your days, things like a different walk to work, or a different drink with your breakfast, these little "trainings" are all in fact giving your brain elasticity and help you to organise yourself for if the B and C let alone A plans don't work out.

The one thing we can really rely on is change, and not always the changes we hoped for, but its worth having lots of dreams to choose from, so keep dreaming folks, the fallow months are all about dreaming.

Om Shanit