WISHING EACH OF YOU BLESSINGS, my friends, in this new autumn season of ripening and reaping the fruits of summer re-creation: a good time to awaken to the NOW moment, to be aware as nature prepares herself for yet another transformation. While in the silence, doing nothing, Autumn comes -- the leaves turn color and let go by themselves.
Time and space are the very music of God's harp, for each moment in time is empty of other moments, and each part of space is empty of other parts, so that we will not have to hear too much at once. That is why there are seasons.
The tree of life, the axis mundi is the central point, the pole around which all revolves. The central point of the world is the point where stillness and movement are together. Movement is time, but stillness is eternity. Realizing how this moment of your life is actually a moment of eternity, and experiencing the eternal aspect of what you are doing in the temporal experience -- this is the mythological experience.
The tree of life is one's inner axis that grows from the depths of the earth and reaches to the heavens. It connects together the primal opposites of the temporal and the eternal. It is life lived from the "still center of the turning world" and it embraces the deepest human mystery: that we are eternal beings living in a world of time.
I have learned to understand time and thought as a spiral: neither a straight line that must go always forward, even into a precipice, nor a circle that must remain forever stuck in repeating past experience. Instead, a spiral, which curves always backward in order to curve forward. What makes time and life into a spiral instead of a straight line or an endless circle is setting aside time for reflection, rest, renewal. That renewal time is the curve that moves the spiral onward. This lets us re-view where we have been, so that we can go forward.
Embrace the open moment, recognizing that each moment may be experienced as a new birth and as a spectacularly open time, when what we do can make a difference to whether the human race grows or dies.
Time ... The ancient ones knew that there was a relationship between time and light. That light has no time. Nothing can travel at the speed of light but light itself. If we approach the speed of light, we must become light. When we become light -- a Child of the Sun -- then time is dissolved. We all know that our deeds today affect tomorrow, that our smallest gestures influence destiny, that the future of our species changes constantly with every action of every living thing on Earth. Time is polychronic AND monochronic -- it does not fly like an arrow only. It also turns. Like a wheel. (He traced a circle in the air with his fingertip.) When these two kinds of time intersect, that is sacred time, ritual time, when you can influence the past and summon destiny from the future.
The orphan boat of my heart
Crosses the unsteady, undulant
Ocean of Time.
All things are accomplished through waiting. Time is the vehicle. If we perseveringly maintain a correct attitude, the force of inner truth is able to work. It penetrates gradually to all that needs to be influenced. To rush anything, or impatiently force results, only causes setback. At best we achieve surface reforms that in time revert to the same problems. Steadfast waiting -- working sincerely to hold correct principles -- leads to slow but permanent changes for the better.
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flow,
Hold Infinity in the palms of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration, but timelessness, eternal life is theirs who live in the present.
The whole thing boils down to giving ourselves in prayer a chance to realize that we have what we seek. We don't have to rush after it. It was there all the time, and if we give it time, it will make itself known to us. There is in all this a sense of the unfolding of mystery in time, a reverence for gradual growth.
Non-action is accepting life and not forcing it: being aware of the ebb and flow of the seasons, aware of the spirituality of all things, aware that in the great abundance of the God-Force, there is no time. It is knowing when to act, and not acting until you know. You can wait forever if you have to. You are eternal... It is being the silent person who is moving relentlessly toward and away from restriction -- towards your goal, one step at a time.