January 15 – Extending your Moments: Make it a point today to “linger” wherever you are before moving on to another location — When it’s time to get out of bed, pause there before doing so to truly Realize where you Are. When it’s time to go to work or school, pause for a deep breath or two at home before setting out. When you move from one room or classroom to another, pause for a moment or two before doing so … When greeting another person, do so intently and sincerely. Make prolonged eye-contact with those people encountered during the day, choosing to truly See them. Do the same when disengaging from another as well (a.k.a. “saying goodbye”) … Your moments are yours to cherish. You cherished them during your early childhood — Today is the day to Do so again.

Even though we have bee taught that time is precise and fixed – that it flows into the future in an orderly and regulated manner, we have all experienced the Truth that our perception of the length of our moments is anything but constant.

As Albert Einstein so astutely noted, “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour.

Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.”

And this wisdom is familiar to us all. Either we experience something painful (or boring or uncomfortable) where time doesn’t go by fast enough, or we experience something pleasurable and time goes by too quickly – even if the same amount of actual time has past. In essence, even though our moments have a fixed value for anyone observing them “from the outside”, we seem to be able to extend or shorten them in our minds.

And this becomes very important when we realize that most humans are only suffering through the “negative side” of this very real psychological effect. As Carl Jung noted, most people are in effect sleep-walking through most of the moments of most of their days (paraphrased).

There are exceptions to this rule, of course. We do seem to “snap out of it” in those rare moments of excitement,

or extreme anxiety.

And yet it makes sense that if our chosen state of mind can make our moments fleeting and meaningless, we can also choose a state of being that will allow us to extend the same – to make those same moments thick & Meaning-full; to “wake up”, as it were.

Well, for starters, there are two popular practices that will not bring about this result.

The first of these mythical “time stretchers” is the manufacturing of excitement – otherwise known as “living life to the fullest”.

While “fun” and “thrill seeking” are indeed fun and thrilling, and while such experiences do indeed make life extremely exciting while we are engaging in them. The hollow “joy” we gain therefrom is quickly lost, which tempts us to become addicted to obtaining the next “rush” elsewhere. As a consequence, we actually end up focusing even more on the future and less on the present than we did before engaging this “meaning-maker”.

The second of the non-functional “time stretchers”, one that is quite en vogue these days, is “going within” – otherwise known as “deep meditation” or “the power of now”.

While also a nice practice in and of itself (when diligently practiced, it can bring a measure of solace to those moments one practices it), there are a few dangers here – at least with regards to making our moments more Meaning-full. First of all, there can be the tendency of such “now practitioners” to lose their connection to the physical side of their lives. There is so much effort placed on mentally perceiving “the moment”, that one’s experience of living becomes primarily a mental one – and there can be no true Meaning in a moment that is not actively lived. The second tendency of such folks that actually dampens the meaning of their lives is the tendency to flow into a cleverly disguised self-centeredness – one sometimes manifests itself in an intellectual euphoria attached to “becoming ego-less”; of losing the boundary between where the self ends and one’s environment begins. While pleasurable, this state of being also effectively neuters a person’s ability to experience the deep Oneness that only comes from purposefully interacting with other beings.

What became clear to me while engaging today’s task is that the Meaning-full moments of my life did not come to me while I was striving to obtain a more peaceful or more joyful life for myself. In order to sink deeply into a particular instant, it was necessary t engage activities that transcended time itself; it was necessary to make choices that were so selfless that they in effect “melted time”.

And so what has worked for me? Which practices have made it easier for me to “extend my moments” – to “bend them towards Meaning”? Today I practiced the following three —

Initially, I engaged one of my favorite “Meaning generators” – something I call “Wonder-immersion”; the choice to pause and consciously notice the amazing uniqueness in everything “normal”, the innate beauty in everything deemed “bland” &/or the perfect radiance in everything “familiar”. Basically, it is choosing to see any part of any moment as truly miraculous.

The second way I have been able to powerfully “extend time” is by engaging a practice I call “radical Gratitude”. This one involves pausing in any particular moment in any particular location and then choosing to deeply feel immensely grateful – simply for being alive at all; simply for life itself. Essentially, you will know when you transcended normal thankfulness and entered the realm of “radical Gratitude” when either your eyes tear-up with a raw love for your life &/or you feel the uncontrollable urge to shout with Joy over the same.

The final “time deepener”, and possibly the most potent one, is choosing in any given moment to extend another sentient being your full being; to be completely open to them; to have no boundaries between the two of you; to give them your most courageous blast of perfect intimacy; to recognize them joyfully as a Soul-brother or Soul-sister.

How it feels to manage this State of Being is almost impossible to describe with words. How does to feel to soar into True Self?

How does it feel to cease trying to slow time down or speed it up, and to caress the Here&now fully instead?

I can’t really answer either of those questions adequately, and yet once you experience them yourself, you will Know.

See You when I see you …

… and until then, Be Now!

Scaughdt

Filed under: 366 Days of Kindness by Scaughdt