Showing posts with label Time. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Time. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Two Types of Plans: The Plan That Fails



Plans are of two types: space-based, and time-based. The first one is spatial - in a coherent and beautiful form, it is always growth outwards from a central point over space. It is organic in nature. The second one is based upon measurements of time - it grows from one point in time to another. It is linear in nature.  

The space-based plan is built inside-out, and its values are determined intrinsically. The time-based plan is built outside-in, and its values are established extrinsically. The first type takes its being from one. The second type shapes one.  

There is oft a warning about plans that fail, urging one to have no plans. This concept may also be known as a "goal-free life." On the other hand, awareness and meticulous planning are deemed a virtue.  

This is a contradictory situation: have no plans, have plans. What is the truth?  

The truth is that both statements are true - but each relates to one kind of plans. It is the time-based plan that is set up for (likely - and in this age, highly likely) failure. This is because Time is a product of our perception. It is a by-product of Space. The speed of the unfolding of Space is Time, and the unfolding of Space is the unfolding of innate Design. In terms of a human, Space is the unfolding of a human's design: their innate talent, preferences, personality - and their context.  

When a plan is set up in time, attention is taken away from the space-based plan - the kind that is demanded of one, the kind that is the able expression of one, the kind that succeeds when one commits. Though success here is not measured against any external variable, but is the fullness and the quality of expression.  

There are two kinds of energy described in the physical science: potential - energy at rest; stored energy - and kinetic - energy in movement. The total energy of any being is potential plus kinetic. When the being is at rest, almost all energy is potential (I say almost, because some is in movement within the system). When the being is in movement, the potential energy transforms into kinetic energy.

How to bring a plan to life?

Attention is a primary human energy. Being alive, in a sensory meaning of the word, is to have potential human energy. Paying attention is the kinetic, the moving, the active, the dynamic form of energy. Attention is life in movement. It is life, lived.  

When we give attention to a space-based plan we engage art, science, and every gift that is human. We bring energy to elements and arrange them in a space which could be conceptual, physical, or virtual (in the computer-world sense of the word). According to the level of innate energy and clarification of the intent of a person, the plan unfolds and "manifests" (materializes) at a certain speed. The higher the energy and the clearer the intent, the "faster" the plan unfolds.  

It does not matter what the timetable of the plan is. There are plans that appear to be fulfilled by a certain time but they have no innate quality. Therefore, they do not fulfill their purpose and are soon in need of repair or elimination or renewal. Of course, even the best-laid plans, the spatial kind, arrive at the same conclusion. Yet it is the life lived and the way it was lived that mattered.  

The question is: "Is a plan - for its entire existence, from conception to initiation to completion to end - a source of increasing fulfillment? Or does it increase a sense of emptiness and loss?"  

Of course, a space-based plan is also bound and often measured by time. Yet in this one, space comes first, time second. Time is determined after the space is established. Time is a slave to this, not master. This is how time must be lived: with a quality of presence, and fullness.  

And this is all I know of this matter so far. 


Image credits: Top - user ba1969 @ sxc.hu | Bottom - Eye Scapes @ Makezine Blog

Friday, June 20, 2008

The Time Traveler's Lover

Dear Quest & Lust:

Am I looking for a soul to share my spiritual journey with? Why, how dare I, when you are my original, sincere, spiritual soul mate!

Ha ha!

It just occurred to me that I feel that old buzzing need of wanting to share my feelings and experiences with someone. I talk to Allah, but at some point, that becomes an abstraction to me. Poor, unrealized me! But one should accept themselves as who they are, right?

So a while ago, I was reading this book called Women in Sufism and oh my! I could barely get through the chapter, Hidden Ways, for I had such a strange sense of connection with the story! It is about al-Hakim at-Tirmidhi and his other-worldly spiritual relationship with his wife. He chronicled their inter-twined spiritual journey in his autobiography.

Not named but as the mother of their son, Abdallah, "Umm 'Abdallah" dreams messages for her husband, and also develops herself spiritually through these prophecies. The wife and husband "are together in the same place," as indicated by the guides in the dreams.

Now, what a strange, and beautiful relationship! But the strangest is the resonance I feel with this story. It's as if I have known this before; it's as though I expect to live it somehow. Just one of those things we know. I know. I just know.

Even the language of some of the dreams she has, as reported in Women of Sufism, is eerily similar to the poems I have been writing. Consider this:

In her dream:
"The bird hopped upwards, climbing form branch to branch..."

From my recent poem, Choices:
"Yes, I choose!
And so I hop
and grow
from branch
to branch
to branch
to an ever-branching branch."

One of the dreams of this unnamed woman also resembles strongly in imagery a dream I had years ago, one that I have been thinking of lately for some reason. The one with the beautiful, silent fountains in ponds of white marble... the whole scene lit up with the bright light of the Moon.... It is one of the most beautiful dreams I have had, though I have seen richer imagery.

In a very similar dream, at-Tirmidhi's wife is given knowledge for her, and him.

My amazement does not cease here. There is mention of herbs in the same dream: the guide - presumably Khidr - presents the evergreen myrtle to her, and shows that he is keeping some for her husband. He also shows her herbs in his other hand, indicating that those are not perennial as the myrtle, but green in some seasons, and gone in another. This is an allusion to the sustained (evergreen) spiritual state of the couple, who are blessed with myrtle. The other herbs are for those who are true also, but not firm in their spiritual achievement.

What bewilders me is my interest in exploring herbs, and their uses and meanings, and the wish to have the company of a curious soul on this journey. To explore and learn the meaning of this beautiful existence. To wander in the enchanted garden, to know the Truth of Being...

I am not sure how this wish plays out in reality... but then I am not telling the truth, because I know how wishes play out in reality. But I digress.

This is so uncanny. Their whole story reads like the story of my life as I have imagined it. Now I am not very comfortable detailing it; but let it suffice that I have placed a great personal importance on sharing my life with one with whom I share a spiritual connection. I almost take it as my destiny; it's one of those things we feel have already happened to us, only we live to live it out.

Sometimes there are presences that I engage with - now that I pay attention to the matter, I am not sure who they are or where are they coming from. Who is this certain presence I have always been aware of, but which yet hasn't revealed? I know some come from over space, but there are certainly some who come over time.

Time, time! This strange veil!

Reading this chapter made me feel like I am the lover of the fabled time-traveler. I sense a presence. I know it's quite here, but not still quite here. Where, exactly, in time, does it all come together?

I await the answer. I await the Hidden to become Manifest...