Trying to experience life fully

Friday August 5, 2016

5 a.m. At the dentist’s yesterday morning, I had to wait quite a while. (A temporary crown had broken the day before, and they had squeezed me in.) Rather than succumb to irritation or impatience, I – existed. I remained in neutral. Hard to explain. And therefore a couple of remarkable things happened. Can I recapture them?

One thing, I wondered what it would be like to be entirely present, to be fully aware of my life as a 6- or 12- (or however many there are) dimensional being. We have been told that as we become more aware of other dimensions, our experience of time necessarily changes (because those dimensions are crammed into our experience of time in a sort of spare-drawer or junk-closet kind of way). So what if we were fully aware, what would it feel like?

I knew that it isn’t a matter of how we think about things. And yet that isn’t something to be ignored, either, if only because the way we think can get in our own way. If you think guidance is “over here” or is “them,” your opportunities are going to be lessened than if you thought “they” are right here and are not “them.” So, although we can’t think our way into an experience of wholeness (call it), we can prevent ourselves from having it by thinking wrongly.

So I kept that in mind, and tried not to think but to be. What would it feel like to experience myself as I really am, rather than only as this 3D-experiencing machine with a lifeline to the non-3D? Since it can’t be thought into, I couldn’t use concepts to frame it. All I could do was intend to feel it.

Working from that intent, I held myself in an attitude of not-thinking alertness. (Sorry for the inadequacy of description, but I can’t find words for it, or in fact even concepts to try to describe in words. I think a better observer might come back with analogies, at least.) The result was that I “intended” into a clear mental space whose “feel” I have experienced occasionally. I saw a room, with two main objects in it, one closer to me than the other. I can’t remember the objects but the impression was of a very rich room – like a room in a museum, say, with the walls covered with artwork. Nothing moved, nor did my intent. I was being careful not to “move,” myself. I let it be, and held my intent, and tried hard not to start thinking about it, or associating ideas to it.

I don’t remember how it ended – whether it faded, or I started to think, or what. It only lasted a short time. Less than a minute, maybe, though it seemed longer (or perhaps I should say “timeless”) while it lasted.

I remember resolving to try to stay in a state of remembering at least my intent to experience life as fully as possible, and it did seem to affect my day, as long as it lasted. (That is, as long as I remembered.)

Now, by that phrase, “experience life as fully as possible,” I am not talking about what people often seem to mean when they say something similar, which is, roughly, “cram as many experiences, emotions, etc. as possible into my life.” I mean nothing like that. Rather than compiling “external” events and my reactions to them, I’m talking about expanding my moment-to-moment pattern of perception so that I live in the world more as it really is and less as it appears from a constricted 3D perspective. I don’t know how to do it – I won’t know unless / until I succeed – but I think I know how to go about it, focused intent and stillness. But how to remember intent, moment by moment? That’s a big question.

Obviously this way of proceeding won’t be for everyone, if it is even for me. But it seems worth a try, and now I’m wondering if this is that people aim for by meditating. The trouble with all this exploring is that so little of it can be expressed, and such little as can be expressed can be so misleading. Still, it seems worth pursuing.

 

7 thoughts on “Trying to experience life fully

  1. I really love this, Frank. Beingness can be so tricky. Any attempt at it feels like popping the gearshift in neutral for the feeling of flow and connection to source. Or that moment of weightless wonder that sometimes happens when we are on a fair ride that holds us between gravity and levity for the sake of memory. Maybe. All that cannot be said is still a wonder to BE on. Thank you…

  2. Frank,
    In your words I see and feel a 21st-century way of talking about things Zen masters have been trying to ‘get across’ for 1500 years; I’m sure teachers from many traditions have been doing the same. And even stronger it comes through that the work here (TGU’s, yours, any of us who care to join in) is to manifest those (now ancient) ‘truths’ in ways that fit the times … our era, our culture, our world-views.

    I encourage you to continue to look down this route (whatever you call it); my guidance says there’s a LOT to be learned, individually and together!
    Jim

  3. Heather, you say it beautifully! And that beauty, poetic may be one of the signs of having really “caught” it. But the signs are only ever signs, and the real thing is the experience.

    I am reminded of how I have thought the spirit/non 3-D or whatever name, it permeates our being like we were a wet sponge immersed in water. The pysical sponge is the flesh, and the water is the spirit, filling every cell of the sponge. So we are in it, of it. Maybe this becoming more conscious of what we are in, the water, is a process where the sponge is being squeezed (stressed) so that water flows out, and then when the pressure is released, water flows in. This way you can make a dried-out sponge, the non-moving rigid parts to get alive again, to do the work of sponge, holding as much water as possible.

  4. Frank & all.

    I am sitting here thinking of us as experimental beings all over the place.

    When walking in the streets of Edinburgh ( a very nice city by the way ), but as in all cities around in the world ( nowadays ) is it beggars on the streets. And many of them looking as youngsters, they are sitting there with eyes empty, the bluntness, and with apathy. Obviously drug addicts several of them.
    I have not noticed these peoples as closely before as I did this time around. And especially looking at one lady there ( approximately in her thirties of age, hard to tell of her blurry outlook ). She was “talking” with herself all the time. Obviously not even aware of sitting there, but still had an old miserable hat in front of her for the bypassers putting some coins in it.

    I am to recall Edgar Cayce once had a reading about these peoples living on the streets as beggars. If not to recall it all wrong E.C. told EACH ONE OF THEM have their own individual choice to make. Not ONE of them alike.
    But at the same time they also have “a mission” for all the bypassers in learning ( to become aware of ), being compassionate for all life about us, and what to do ( or not to do ) with our life.

    Well, I am still “digesting” my journey.
    B & B, Inger Lise

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