Assignment 1, Session 3

In Search of a Missing Connection

           The practice part of TSK is hard for me.  At least these days it is.  In the 1980’s I delighted in the world they opened, but now I find them an unwelcome affront to my sense of competence and the associated late-in-life gathering of energies, skills, and interests.  I would prefer not to be told that the clothesline (linear time) on which my wardrobe hangs, is merely an illusion.

          Yet, even to say that there was once a time when greater openness reigned, like a spring rain sweeping across the dry landscape, is to invoke a connection and a kind of time that allows for memory and the act of remembrance.

          When we die, it is said that the life now over can pass before us vividly, just as it happened.  In a suddenly arising moment, it all comes back to say farewell.  Where have those memories of a lifetime been waiting?  Have they been stored in all those brain cells—as numerous as the stars—and are now set free, the latches of their bird cages snapped in a single moment, and suddenly the sky is alive with their beating wings?

          Perhaps it’s the chain links of linear time that snap when the memories of a whole lifetime are set free.  And perhaps “passing in front of our eyes” is not the accurate phrase for such an experience.   Instead of a parade, it might feel more like sitting around a campfire surrounded by all we cared about, now that we are finally free to visit will all these inconvenient companions of our journey–precisely because we can no longer even hope to reform them.

         I appreciated Jack’s ‘variation” of this week’s practice.  Instead of looking “between” (thoughts and moments), try looking back from the perspective of the moment that has just stepped onto centre stage and from there ask if there is a connection with the previous moment.  I find this a comforting alternative to the invitation to make a free-fall jump off all moments.  Instead, looking out from where I am presently looking, I am invited to continue wearing whatever garment of time I find myself in and to look into a world before clothing was invented.

         I wonder if this could be a good preparation for that moment when my brain and heart will shut down for good and a new kind of time arises before my eyes; when the fleet of moments now bobbing in the harbour sets sail for open sea.

 –Michael Gray, 2/02/14