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!