Edge of the Future – photo by gonzalo ar – Flickr
http://tinyurl.com/n2j69kg
There are times, while walking in nature for instance, a new moment emerges untouched, where the haze of thoughts and self concerns are blown away like dark smoke, and the seed of a new moment is born, freshly germinating by an impression deeply felt. Gradually, after the experience of such openness begins to fill in with thoughts and other consolidating structures, the open potential of the original moment thins out into a string of my usual desires and perpetuating stories. But I can sometimes choose to again orient toward the edge of the future. Reorienting toward the edge seems to be free of inhibiting attitudes and concerns for safety, it’s a feeling of open expectancy, pleasant anticipation without an object, an acceptance and trust in whatever emerges with an almost playful curiosity. It feels fresh, free, and new – a pristine moment, a blooming seed of time.
The ‘edge of the future‘ does not seem so much a boundary as a welcoming attitude; and not so much a place as an arising of the present. Whether in the midst of normal activities or deep meditation, it’s not altogether where I look but how. It does manifest as the new, the fresh, and the revitalizing, or so it seems to me. It’s accepting the openness of the unknown…
David
Hi Michael,
Thanks for responding. Yes, this exercise helps me see that the structuring of experience by the self toward an imaginary future has an effect on the ‘now’: insuring a kind of poverty of the present… the full present tends to be overlooked, skipped, foreshortened, and consequently unsatisfactory. Thus, I tend to keep looking ahead for more, a vicious, self-centered circle.
Best,
David
Hi David. I really like your post, and your discernment that it’s as much how we look as where (in our attempt to see the future arising). That was my sense too. When I try this exercise, I find myself wondering if there is a barrier that the future has to cross to reach the present, but I don’t ever get a sense of something new arriving. If I wonder what will come next it feels like I’m manufacturing images, not discovering them. You seem to have reached a deeper kind of participation in lived time. — Michael