Out of the beauty of perfe
ct expression comes the ‘aliveness’ of Knowledge, like a dance, like beautiful music sounding, or perhaps like a taste that satisfies an unsuspected hunger.  Not bound by ‘here’ or by ‘this’, the Body of Knowledge is no body at all. Free from a conceptual framework or a structural order, it is not shaped and formed as bodies usually are. There are no previous records to rely on, no categories based on given points. Nothing points toward it and nothing prevents it from becoming. KTS 445
There is a very well-timed article by Michael Gray quoted recently in the Creative Inquiry Blog, that made me think about the availability of knowledge and how it can be expressed.
“If we can learn to appreciate what we have been in the past, we will feel more grounded in the present, and this grounding will let us see the past with friendlier eyes.†… It is like discovering a family that I thought I had lost. (from The Past as Gateway by Michael Gray – see the link below)
http://www.michaelgrayauthor.com/download/The-Past-as-Gateway-PDF.pdf
His article reminds me the time when I have also participated in a Human Development Program at Nyingma Institute, and have given a sharp look on the past years of my life, feeling myself a little bit more at ease with whatever happened.
I could see that the past is not there, closed in time, but as alive as the present. I saw that the knowledge field of my life can shine and reflect in different ways. The only thing that matters is the openness that my awareness allows in the experience. This awareness is not bound to happy endings, nor is fixed. It does not resolve conflict or work toward solutions. It brings light, and light gives freedom to mind beyond all imagination.
The more openness is allowed, the more unimpeded are the rhythms of time. It doesn´t matter if what is perceived is a junk or a jewel, if I let them expressed themselves my heart will be nourished and satisfied, and the light of knowledge will shine through. Limitations and anxieties once recognized can give way to light, and when clarity is available, I can refuse the old answers.
Rigid dichotomies begin to dissolve and loosen in favor of a more open allowing and a more active presentation. KTS 441
We don´t have to be confined by lower level structures, bounded by the past. They can coexist with whatever appears.
It’s useful to have you point out that “the past . . . is alive in the present”. I don’t think I thought of it that way when I wrote the Gesar article. I think I thought of the past as coming out of shadows which my self-rejection had placed over it. And when I was obliged to revisit those past incidents (in the HDTP program and with the guidance of Rinpoche’s “Knowledge of Freedom: Time to Change”), a new appreciation for the person I had then been shone a light on a new freedom that opened up in the present.
But you put it in a useful way: That a new openness in the present allowed the past to be alive in the present.” Such connections really do reveal that the past and the present are one, don’t they?
I liked your penetrating insight, Eliana. Nicely said.