Time and Timelessness

Bede's post this week is a very interesting discussion of those moments when the barriers between this moment and the next or this person and the next seem to dissolve. He describes feeling this way about time itself on his recent trip to Turkey.

I think these experiences are pretty common. I think, in fact, that they happen with both frequency and regularity. But in our radically secular culture we are trained to ignore them. And if they are strong enough that we have to notice them, we almost never, ever mention them to another person. People in our society don't talk about that sort of thing. You have to be someone pretty quirky, like a monk or a teen, to do that. But these experiences of awareness of the spiritual dimension of things are part of life. People who do brain research can even point to the places in the brain where they happen. They are part of the gift of our human nature; God pulling us to that place where boundaries aren't what we thought, and where we are really one with each other and with the world as it is and as it was. Quite a thing for an old man and a young man to share. (source)

Bede also talks about the role of meditation in noticing such things:

I first began noticing it in meditation. Meditation is an old and familiar experience to me, and the technique is part of my ordinary consciousness: attend to your breath (or whatever you're using), when you notice that you've drifted away, bring yourself back to the present, and do that as many times as necessary, with a gentle but firm touch. So if I'm sitting there meditating and find a thought of, say, the city of Sardis in Turkey coming into my mind, I just label it as "thinking", and bring myself back to the present. The trouble is that I'm no longer sure that Sardis is part of the past. What if that ancient city, those ancient ruins, are actually part of my present? This isn't anything that I'm thinking my way into. It's just happening. I can't seem to muster up the energy necessary to regard Sardis as a "distraction", because it seems very much a part of now. (source)

The Bridge in West Cornwall
I've noticed this sort of thing myself from time-to-time. For instance, a few years ago I was visiting my therapist at the time, Mary, up in a place called West Cornwall, Connecticut. It's a beautiful New England village in a small river valley. It is best known for an old-fashioned covered bridge across the Housatonic River. I was approaching this red bridge walking along the bank when I noticed--I mean really noticed--the sight and sound of the river flowing over the rocks in the river. Suddenly I felt as though I was a part of that river and that it was part of me. I sat down on the bank and stayed with the feeling until it began to fade.

It's a wonderful thing to notice, and I think Bede is right that pretty much everybody has these moments. It's too bad we are conditioned to ignore them, as they do reveal something very important about the nature of things.

-t