Vertical Time

This past year,  a new concept came to my awareness through the spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle, and it's one worth sharing.

If we think about when we are born and follow it to this very moment, we can look back and reflect upon all that has happened.
The result has us sitting where we are, right now, reading this particular blog. Everything in your life, each experience, and sensation, no matter how "good" or "bad" they may have been, has molded you into the person you are in this very moment. If we use this very moment as a starting point and project into the future we may have certain goals and aspirations, none of which have been fulfilled as they are sitting in that space that is yet to unfold. And we don't know how much remaining time we have along this life continuum. This is known as horizontal time...the chronology of our lives which, for many of us, is where the majority of our attention is spent, either reminiscing in the past or projecting into the future.

Now take a moment to simply sit quietly and sense all that you can...what do you hear, see, taste, smell, or touch? When we sit in this state of awareness, we are no longer moving along the horizontal continuum, but are in what Eckhart Tolle calls "Vertical Time", the state of complete presence, bearing witness to our current experience. This often unfamiliar and unexplored state helps us to be fully alive in the present moment which often reveals itself as being completely whole and in need of nothing else.

I began teaching this idea in our Advanced Studies program this past year in the module associated with Yoga for Healthy and Conscious Aging. For so many in our culture, when we sit in the present moment and begin to launch into future thought, it can be wrought with anxiety and fear. How much time do I have left? Do I have financial resources that will support me until the end? Will I be healthy or experience pain? How will I cope with the loss of friends and loved ones? This futuristic thinking can capture a great deal of our energy and attention and in doing so, drag us away from what is actually happening. It's as if vertical time is screaming at us, "Pay attention...You're missing your life!".

The idea of vertical time was amplified on our recent seven weeks of travel in Australia and Bali. Since both my husband and I have been working with the concept of being in the here and now, every once in a while we'd be traveling someplace, discussing future possibilities and travel fantasies until one of us would simply say, "vertical time" to bring us back into being exactly where we were and not drifting off to some imagined futuristic place. It occurred to me that one of the reasons I love to travel extensively is because it encourages me to be in vertical time. Being in an unfamiliar environment, the senses light up and we take in so much more than in our day-to-day routines. The wonders of nature, different and exotic foods, all sorts of smells both pleasant and not-so-much all provide the perfect setting to be fully present. It literally enlivens the senses and challenges our regular internal status quo.

Often when we return from our holidays, we step back onto the horizontal axis of time through the repetition and mundane nature of habitual living. Our practices of both yoga and meditation, even though they might be familiar, provide us with a sense of spaciousness to simply check-in to what's happening, both in our internal and external environments. We sense the experience we're creating through our yoga poses. We connect to the now moment through the simplicity of being with just this one breath. We get quiet and still so that our inner wisdom and inherent intuition can be heard.

A sobering statement that I once heard at the beginning of a guided meditation is that "We're all going to die. We just don't know when." A part of me resisted hearing this, I mean, who wanted to hear about our impending, someday death when all I wanted to experience was a blissful peacefulness? Yet what the statement ignites is a sense of being grateful and present in each moment of the life I'm living. I don't wish to be tangled in the thoughts of what and when something might possibly happen and miss the incredible moment that I'm fortunate to be alive.

Get vertical. Your heart and soul are calling you to do so.

Note: This is my 500th blog post! 

Time For Balance

I'm back in the States and back at work. It's been quite a break for me, not any longer than last year, but quite a different experience. Our trip was ironically book-ended by two funerals, which when experienced with travel and vacation in between, is a powerful reminder of the fragility and preciousness of life. Perhaps it added a sweetness to the experience, bringing the sensations of travel and the unknown into a more vivid experience. Adding to the colorfulness of the trip, our house went into escrow when we were a few days away from returning from Australia. This, in turn, added a layer into the saying of "hit the ground running" which we didn't plan for nor expect.

Needless to say, my motto for the week has been to remind myself to make room for welcoming rest among the chaos.

And what a powerful reminder is before us! The Equinox is happening this weekend-the shift from one season and into the next. We mark and celebrate both Equinoxes and Solstices every three months as they are powerful turning points as well as compasses in our lives. The Equinox is about balance and equanimity with daylight and night hours becoming more or less the same as we sense a shift out of the more extreme temperatures into more mild conditions. The Solstices represent the extremes, longest day and longest night of the year. I think of the Equinoxes as being the more gentle reminders of change, beckoning us to get outside, either for the first time in the spring or for the last few times before winter arrives.

Our last day in Melbourne was spent in the Royal Melbourne Botanical Gardens (a worthy and spectacular place to visit if you're ever in the neighborhood). We could sense that spring was getting primed to burst forth, noticing buds on plants and smelling jonquils, jasmine, and cherry blossoms. And this week in the desert, you can sense a shift simply by looking at the forecast over the next week with no temperatures predicted to pass the 100F (38C) mark. The dragon's breath of summer is beginning to recede, the Harvest Full moon has passed, and the Northern Hemisphere is taking the turn toward the cooler and incubating fall and winter months.

As it relates to the physical practice of yoga, it encourages us to check-in to see if there's an underlying current of energy that is one of ease rather than distress or agitation. In Patanjali's Sutra 2:46, Sthira Sukham Asanam, it states that the "asanam" or posture finds a state of yoga/union when it is both alert and relaxed. Nowhere in the Sutras does Patanjali suggest that we need to push, strive, or struggle during our practice. To me, it says that although we may be challenged, whether it's sitting quietly in meditation or practicing a Warrior Pose, within each of those moments we have an underlying feeling of ease and presence. It can seem quite counter-intuitive as I was always rewarded for "trying hard and pushing through". I was "tough" and that was a good thing, so to back off and not always "do my best" feels uncomfortably unfamiliar.

We all have a tipping point where whatever we're doing is no longer beneficial. Beyond this optimum point, what may have had an essence of ease shifts towards struggle. Our physical structure is like that as well if we push our bodies too hard, the tissues begin to break down. Our practice is an amazing opportunity to deepen our internal awareness or our interoceptive ability, to notice if the ease has gone out of the equation and to once again cultivate its presence.

My thought of the week is no matter what you're doing in your life-a yoga pose, closing escrow on a house, recalibrating your schedule, or taking a driving test that you check-in to see if ease is detectable. If not...back off, take a deep breath, and find that sweet spot!