No Space, No Time; Just Here, Just Now

One of my recent discoveries on the Jazz front is a British group of artists who call themselves United Vibrations. The title of the cut that I featured on a recent Jazz Gumbo podcast is paraphrased in this blog’s title (http://jazzgumbo.podomatic.com/entry/2012-12-10T21_54_13-08_00 ). I wonder, as I listen to this fast-paced groove, whether the young masters know the wisdom of their mantra, or whether they’re just passing on some learned philosophy. I can’t help but to suppose the latter, though in the interview segment in which I caught some of their thoughts about music and politics and life, they sounded remarkably mature and thoughtful. It’s just that, well, I’ve always thought of myself as mature and thoughtful, and yet this knowledge is proving so difficult for me to absorb.
You see, I no longer doubt the truth of Nowness, which to my own ears has been most helpfully expressed by Eckhart Tolle. But getting past the intellectual blocks doesn’t in itself make a truth liveable.

And so, my struggle with time continues. Maybe not so much a struggle anymore (I’ve progressed that far – I’m more accepting of my inability to have the dimensions and capacities of time accommodate themselves to me). But I still experience, what shall I call it ... disappointment? ... at what I can fit into the sweeping of the clock’s hand, and what I cannot.

Oh well. I’ve gotten much better at pulling myself back into the moment, into now, and feeling the relief, the peace, the gratitude that descends, as I realize again that “...no doubt, the universe is unfolding as it should”, and that “this” – whatever “this” is in its moment – is immanently embraceable.

I’ll still take the time, however, to make my occasional resolutions about my engagement with time. And there’s no better time than now. The beginning of the New Year, Solstice just passed, the days already creeping long, coming out of this odd, suspended moment that is the week between Christmas and New Year.

What are my resolutions? It doesn’t really matter, does it? A resolution is, at best, a small piece of that ongoing conversation between self and self, which is also a conversation between self and existence, between what I am and what I dream, between the elemental and the possible, in all things.

Love to you. All the brightest hopes for your New Year. And may you walk in perfect harmony with time.