February 5, 2005








  • Eckhart Tolle has been talking about worrying and waiting: “You are identified with your mind, which is projecting itself into an imaginary future situation and creating fear.  There is no way you can cope with such a situation, because it doesn’t count… All that you ever have to deal with, to cope with, in real life – as opposed to imaginary mind projections – is this moment… What is wrong with this moment?  You can always cope with the Now, but you can never cope with the future – nor should you have to.  The answer, the strength, the right action or the resource will be there when you need it, not before, not after…Is your goal taking up so much of your attention that you reduce the present moment to a means to an end?… Are you waiting to start living?…”(p 85)  >You will never be ‘x’ enough, so you might as well do it now!< 


     


    “Waiting is a state of mind. Basically it means that you want the future; you don’t want the present… You can improve your life situation, but you cannot improve your life.  Life is primary.  Life is your deepest inner Being.  It is already whole, complete, perfect.”  >Shalom is present within – God’s reconciliation just waits to be claimed.<  “The mistake lies in using [goals] as a substitute for the feeling of life, for Being.  The only point of access for that is the Now… When you fully accept what you have got, you are grateful for what you have got, grateful for what is, grateful for Being…” (p 86) >It’s not having what you want, it’s wanting what you’ve got – Sheryl Crow<  “So give up waiting as a state of mind.  When you catch yourself slipping into waiting – snap out of it.  Come into the present moment.  Just be and enjoy being…” (p 87)


     


    In Perth Amboy this morning, and crossing Water Street, I enter the parking lot of the Raritan Yacht Club, where I decide to sit for a while on a bench.  Stretching out into the water to my left is a fishing pier, the locked gate at the land end tells of it being private property; across the Kill from the pier is Staten Island.  The sun is not very high yet, and silvers the water rippling in from the bay – if I shade my eyes I can see the Atlantic Highlands along the horizon.  The only other people are an ambulance crew taking a break in the parking lot behind me.  They barely make my radar until they start feeding a pigeon, which draws flocks of screaming gulls.


     


    More to avoid guano than anything else, I begin to walk south.  Once I pass the Yacht Club itself, there are no more people, and soon the sound of sanders against fiberglass hulls fades away.  Looking out over the water I see a mix of fresh water ducks, Canada geese, cormorants (aka concubines…), a few brown gulls, but mostly I see the smaller, gray gulls.  Peace steals over me, and all is so still that when a flock of sparrows flies overhead, I can hear their feathers in flight.  I have become conscious of the sun, warm on my face, and the slight wind as well, coming from the land.  Smells of salt water mixed with fresh…the sounds of wind and wave against the shore…the cries of gulls…the cawing of crows from the city behind me… (I have always loved the calls of crows, and the years that West Nile Virus decimated their populations stand out as the most silent summers I remember.)


     


    As I walk, I feel my legs move, swinging freely from my hips, and I try to make as little sound as I can.  My breath, contrary to the labored asthma of the night, moves easily in and out.  I am aware of the sense of God, of Being, that is present in the trees and the grass, the snow, and even the gulls lined up on the railing.  Trying to move while remaining in the Now, and staying connected to the deep feeling of Shalom, I notice that even the gulls that are within touching distance do not move, although they push off in screaming flight when another walker goes by… Did you know that, while ducks just dip their heads below the waterline to feed, tipping their butts to the sky, seagulls leap into the air about a foot, then dive directly into the water to get their food?