I am indebted to
Laurel Scheaf
who inspired this conversation.
Transformation
doesn't change a thing. Without
transformation
I had
my life
and whatever was going on with it. With
transformation
I still have the same life and the same whatever's going on with it
(like I said, it doesn't change a thing). What goeswithtransformation
(as
Alan Watts
may have said) newly however, is a dramatic shift in the
context
in which I experience
my life
ie a dramatic shift in the
context
in which I experience my
future,
my
present,
and my
past
ie especially my
past.
Question:
isn't the
presentin
the past,
when I'm looking back from the
future?
I
mean,
isn't all of it in
the past,
when I'm looking back from the
future?
That's an idea I've pondered late in the midnight hours of those
blustery nights we've all had when you can't fall
asleep
so you just lay there alone with your thoughts.
Answer
ie inference (after many such nights): no - it's always the
present
ie it's always now.
So when I'm (quote unquote) "looking back from the
future",
it's the
presentfuture I'm looking back from. And given it's
always the
present,
when I'm "looking back at
the past"
it's the presentpast I'm looking back at.
One day, with regard to my untransformed presentpast, it became obvious
to me (that is to say now it's obvious to me) that
wherever I went, there I was. That's an
extraordinaryobservation
coming from the
transformed
presentfuture in recognition of something so simple, something so
stark, something so profound, something so blindingly
obvious that it stands in sharp contrast to
the way
I experienced the untransformed presentpast in the moment it was
happening.
Life always was unfolding just
the way
it unfolds. There always was
nowhere to go,
and there always was
nothing to get.
Things always were alright, and I always was alright.
Yet while it was
happening,
the truth
is I
considered
myself to be anything but that. What I didn't
get
ie what was missing at the
time,
was
transformation
ie I didn't
get
the
context
in which I could experience it that
way.
At the
time,
the event
"transformation"
was in the unhappened presentfuture. The presentpast hadn't yet been
recontextualized.
Today
Laurence
(presentfuture) notices
Laurence
(presentpast) not
getting
it, and
loves
him,
befriends
him, and supports him without protecting him from any of the
consequences of his life, waiting patiently with compassion for him
to inevitably,
inexorably
realize he is and always wassource
and
perfect
all along.
That said, this
conversation
wouldn't have
integrity
without a
close
look at what it
means
to have been
"perfect
all along". Being
perfect
doesn't
mean
everything I did was good. That makes being
perfect
a value judgement. Being
perfectmeans
I did what I did, and I was what I was, and that's what I did, and
that's what I was. That's what it is to be
perfect.
That makes being
perfect
a space ie a
context
to come from.
Laurence
(presentpast) didn't
get
that. I,
Laurence
(presentfuture),
get
it about me,
Laurence
(presentpast): wherever I went, there I was. Look: that's
transformationrecontextualizingthe past,
yet notice it doesn't change a thing about it.