Like a sandcastle, all is temporary.
Build it, tend it, enjoy it.
And when the time comes, let it go.
– Jack Kornfield
In a conventional sense, we all know that everything is temporary.
Life is change. This moment will be gone. I will be gone. Everyone and everything I know will be gone. All traces of everyone and everything I know will be gone. This universe as we know it will be gone.
And we can also explore this in ways that are more transforming.
NOTICING IT HERE AND NOW
We can notice how it’s all changing here and now. By paying attention, we may find that any experience comes and goes. And anything we take as who or what we are changes too. This human self comes and goes. (In dreams, this human self may be gone and something else is here instead.)
In basic meditation, we notice what’s here and allow it as it is. And we may even notice that it’s already allowed and already noticed. It’s allowed by mind, space, and life. And it’s noticed by consciousness just by appearing in consciousness and before it’s consciously noticed.
We can support this exploration by training a more stable attention.
And we can also explore what happens in our mental field.
We can notice and explore the mental images we have of time – perhaps as a continuum divided into past, future, and present. And how we remember what just happened and put it in the past category. How we put labels and mental images on what happens now to categorize and make sense of it. (Always a little behind when it happens.) And how we create mental images predicting the immediate future.
Through all this mental activity, which happens automatically and often without any conscious noticing, we create a sense of continuity. Without it, there would be no continuity. There would be no sense of past, future, or present, or even of time. It would just be what happens here and now and nothing else. In other words, we wouldn’t be able to function.
At the same time, any sense of time, continuity, and past, present, and future, is created by our mental field. It is, in a sense, similar in kind to a dream or fantasy. It just happens to be something that helps us make sense of the world and function in it.
ONGOING EXPLORATION
As with much else, this is an endless exploration.
We can invite more parts of us to align with the changing nature of life in a visceral way. We can explore the fear different parts of us have of different types of change. And so on.
INITIAL NOTES
- like a sandcastle
- easy to get intellectually
- and endless exploration
- can find it here and now
- can invite more parts of us to align with it (healing, maturing)
- basic meditation – notice it here and now
- train more stable focus
- heart-centered practices
- find our nature and live from that noticing
…..
We all know that it’s all temporary.
Life is change.
Everything we know, and eventually any trace of everything we know, will be gone. It will be gone to us when we die. It will be gone from existence.
It’s easy to understand it intellectually, and we can also explore it in ways that are more transforming.
….
DRAFT 2
We all know that it’s all temporary.
Life is change.
Everything we know, and eventually any trace of everything we know, will be gone. It will be gone to us when we die. It will be gone from existence.
It’s easy to understand it intellectually, and we can also explore it in ways that are more transforming.
……
DRAFT 1
This is very simple, and there is no end to layers when it comes to viscerally getting it.
All is temporary. Everyone and everything we know will be gone. This planet will be gone. Any trace of humanity will be gone. This universe, as we know it, will be gone. All will be gone.
It’s not difficult to get this intellectually and have it as kind of conscious philosophy of life. We can even create an identity around it as someone who gets and embraces that life is change.
And yet, that’s just the beginning. There is no end to getting it and absorbing it and taking it in and living from it.
There will always be parts of us caught up in fear and scary beliefs about loss.
So how do we
…..