Feeling currents swooping about me in swift and rapid swirls, I seek that center point of balance where I can rest in solid calm.
It’s a lifelong dance I haven’t mastered.
But I keep trying. These days you’ll find me gripping the wheel as I drive the two-lane highway, listening to Eckhart Tolle in my Toyota. The passenger seat may be filled with a laptop computer, a stack of someone else’s mail, a jar full of water with a squeeze of lemon, and a bag of some kind of portable lunch snack (granola bar, carrot sticks, maybe Jeb’s junky Chex mix if I’m desperate).
The dash needs to be dusted. Shells are scattered in the cup holders. Meher Baba‘s image is propped to look at me in his youthful beardedness with the quote “Search for God within, the only treasure worth finding.”
Text messages may be coming in through my iPhone. Voicemail messages stacked. I’ll be slowing down where they’re doing the road work to make a new turn lane, easing through the aim of radar guns.
Who knows what I’m mulling over as I drive. My reckless, active mind on auto-pilot. Thinking thoughts a-plenty, while all the while the Albatrosses soar. The whales are making their way through the Pacific back to our shores. The mango tree in my yard is blooming.
Where am I as Eckhart’s voice, clear and calm with that indistinguishable foreign accent, is reminding me through car speakers that time is an illusion? That all that ever exists is now. Right now. Here. In the exquisite, unfathomable existence of being.
He says our minds resist. Persist. They’re locked in a timeline that does not exist. We are everywhere but here.
My heart knows this is true while my bull-headed mind quips, “Oh, yes, give me Now! But don’t forget to add first grade spelling tests and that after-school dental appointment.”
That’s me trying to be witty as I dance toward the balance, skipping steps and squashing toes as I go.
Playing with timelines (only momentarily, Eckhart) I look back at these Archives to this same time last year. (Was I still here in WordPress-land 365 days ago, asking questions and typing out my heart?)
The thread still seems the same. Then. Now. I’m practicing. Trying my best to flow with the current of life. Then, “Best Laid Plans” was dealing with a broken down washing machine but finding Venus and the moon through the detour of my plan.
Now, “Mystery Tour on the Road Less Traveled” draws on the curiosity of the future.
In one year, so much has changed, and yet, these basic truths remain. I’m still right here, right now. Sifting in the amorphous sphere of movement. Breathing somewhere between past and future. Susceptible to gentle or explosive changes in a plan.
It’s here I seek some loose parameters. Try to keep Jeb’s teeth clean. Make sure I eat my vegetables. Return phone calls within a day or two. Don’t text while driving. Hold the steering wheel but keep my grip relaxed.
Let Eckhart remind me of the power of the Now.
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