What If?

Exploring the power of quantum curiosity.

This weekly rave is going out early to include an invitation to my Unity presentation this Sunday at 11 am Pacific. Ashlanders can attend in person (it’s in the Havurah at 185 N Mountain) and anyone can tune in via zoom here.

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7078305589#success

Here’s my theme:

"What if we could experience unconditional love, not as perfection but presence? Imagine being fully present, able to welcome everything with gratitude, even the inevitable suffering of this human world. It takes surrender to embrace this paradox, not giving up in resignation but letting go in celebration. What if the alchemy that turns this theory into experience is activated by curiosity?"

I’ll probably mention my fave quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald: “The sign of true intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas at the same time and remain functional.” Curiosity is what allows this.

What is curiosity? It’s the signature of an open mind, signifying comfort with uncertainty and an activated interest in novelty. The saying, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” explains the systemic calcification that occurs as we age and become less flexible, both physically and mentally. I witnessed this happening with a close friend who transformed from a youthful rebel to a middle aged rule follower to an elderly drudge.

His 70-year-old model is fundamentally different than its 20-year-old predecessor. Once a rebel who questioned everything, he now agrees / obeys automatically and reacts in anger towards anyone who dares venture the slightest degree of curiosity or skepticism. As that famous movie explained, “The Matrix has him.” Our very infrequent conversations are now limited to weather and family trivialities.

But there are lots of old dogs who love to learn new tricks. They remain young at heart, eager to explore new terrain of thought and experience. I’m assuming that you are one such adventurer so let’s launch a brief expedition together:

What if time stopped?

See if you can trick yourself out of time right now. As you’re reading, pause for a moment by letting go of any sense of motion or intention or expectation, right here and now … focusing between these words. And pausing here.

I inserted extra space between a few words and invite you to return to one of them now, to focus your eyes there, on that space. As you do, let go of any thinking and just be. See if you can feel time stopping.

David Hawkins writes in Power vs Force: “When time stops, all problems disappear; they are merely artifacts of a point of perception. As the Presence prevails, there is no further identification with the body or the mind. When the mind grows silent, the thought “I Am” also disappears, and Pure Awareness shines forth to illuminate what one is, was, and always will be, beyond all worlds and all universes, beyond time, and therefore without beginning and end.”

Imagine the disappearance of “I Am.” It seems inconceivable yet this is exactly what happens when we sleep and when we die. The “I” we’ve assumed ourselves to be just goes away. And then it returns, when we awaken and when we take on another life (so some of us believe).

Except, maybe that cycle doesn’t need to repeat forever. Maybe a different experience altogether is available. How might the familiar give way to novelty? By surrendering that point of perception for good. I’m talking about “me,” or “you.” Our identity. Gone for the moment, then… what if we could sustain that space, replacing-Self as who/what we really are?

Remember that epic line from an old Animals song: “We gotta get outta this place, if it’s the last thing we ever do.” Maybe that’s a 60’s take on the search for enlightenment and ending the Groundhog Day cycle of repetition and maybe even reincarnation.

In Buckminster Fuller’s book, I Seem to Be a Verb, he wrote: “I live on Earth at the present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing - a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process - an integral function of the universe.”

I hope some of you can tune in Sunday at 11 Pacific at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7078305589#success. There’s great music and we’ll do a healing transmission.