Saturday, October 3, 2009

The River of Time


It’s 4:25 AM, the crickets are chirping, my dig Otto and my husband are snoring quietly. Off in the distance I can hear the trucks moving along the highway. The world is asleep except for the crickets, the trucks, and me.

I love this time of day.

This week I begin teaching meditation again. It’s going to be a little different this fall. I am teaching two classes, which will be challenging considering everything else I am doing this fall, however, I am excited by the possibilities. On of the classes truly doesn’t require much teaching, but rather, leading. I am facilitating a guided meditation for relaxation. It’s a short class, only 45 minutes, so there is not much time for talking.

The next class is called Modern Spiritualities. There will be some meditation, some spiritual practices, some Reiki and energy work, but it is mainly a class about finding spirit within. At least that is my vision. We will see how it plays out.

So, that is what’s on my mind. I am gearing up to lead these classes and I always worry that I won’t be interesting enough, or I will stir up too much in my students and they will be unhappy. I found that most people are eager and want to find meaning their lives and that’s why they sign up for my classes.

My insecurities aside… the other thought on my mind was the nature of time. Time is a dimension, time and space. It is part of the framework of physical existence on this plane. It is very difficult to imagine anything outside the parameters of time. We are used to having time as our constant companions. How would my life have any points of references if I couldn’t describe yesterday, or last year, or a lifetime ago? While the future isn’t here yet, we all spend much of our lives worried about it.

My thought, which isn’t particularly original, is that time is a river. A flowing energy transports us from one event to the next as we live our lives.

When my dog Itza died, I was devastated. My heart was broken. The thought of never seeing him again in this lifetime was more than I could bear. I remember thinking that I have all these years to live before I will see him again. However, there was never any doubt in my mind that I would see him again. There was a sense of movement with my feelings.

When we are born and we find ourselves immersed in this stream of time that doesn’t stop until we die. We just flow along moving from one event to the next. Occasionally the trip will be punctuated with emotional traumas, or joyous happenings that make us feel transported.

However, the river never stops flowing as long as we are breathing. We move past whatever took place that stirs up our emotions.

I am thinking of a boy floating down the river in an inner tube. The current causes him to spin slowly, ever carried forward. Occasionally he will meet a rock or a stick that protrudes from the depths, his forward motion will be halted for a time, but eventually the power of the current will win out and his forward motion will once more commence, leaving the obstruction behind him. That is the nature of time.

The problem occurs when the boy continues to long for the rock, he continues to think about his brief stay at that point in the river. He isn’t even considering the new sights right before him, because in his mind he is somewhere up river. Life would be easier if we could go of the rocks that have slowed our motion.

The loss of a loved one is a big rock in the river, and many times, we cannot move past it. We don’t want to let go of the rock because we feel that it will be letting go of the person we love so dearly. That’ is truly understandable. The death of a beloved person can completely stop anyone’s forward motion.

I found comfort knowing that there may many years to come before I would be reunited with my dog, but reunited we would be and I let my grip on the rock loosen enough to allow the current to take hold of me once again. Off I once again began to float in my inner tube, gently spinning. In my heart, I carry my beloved dog, and in a sense, we are now floating down the river in the same inner tube rather than two separate ones. It’s almost as if he jumped out of his inner tube, into mine and now our journey is one. This is where my true comfort comes from, we are now traveling together.

Is it possible to ease the pain of all loss by letting go of the rock that holds us and just allow the current to take us? I think so….

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