I just now did the math to see how many days I’ve been alive so far. At the moment I’m 73, which tallies roughly 27,000 days lived. Whew, that was fast! I mean, when I (you) consider how quickly a single day flies by, it seems like there should have been a million by now.
Yes, it’s true that some of our days do not pass quickly: the ones that are nightmares of one sort or another. Worry about a loved one, some awful crisis. Those days feel as though they’ll never end. But the great majority of our days, for most of us, whip past us without our ever noticing.
Now (you guessed it) here’s the question for us all: How many do I have left?
Today could be it, my love. It is at our peril that we ever lose track of that.
* * *
The seeker is one who senses there is more to life, more to reality, to self, than the solid, familiar ground where life takes place. There is the sense of something beyond, some potential. Other. The playing field where ordinary life is lived, where things like goals and history, identity and belief, define reality: all of that is felt by a seeker to be somehow subject to reconsideration. Maybe these things our feet stand on, that seem to give us a foundation — who we seem to be, ordinary life events, relationships — are not ever going to set us free. They will not deliver anything ultimate.
Maybe one fine day you’ll find yourself standing at the edge of a cliff, and you’ll come to know the end of gravity.
The seeker is at least considering the idea that what appears to be solid ground isn’t. Is limiting. Illusory. Maybe there is another direction to go in. Another dimension of sorts.
This must be why heaven, why God, is thought to be “up there” someplace, in the sky. Not tethered to the earth. Reality becomes multidimensional as soon as there’s more to it than forward, back, sideways.
* * *
Flirt with danger, flirt with death. Walk along the edge and don’t pay attention to where your feet are relative to the ground, relative to the air. It’s the edge of things: ground meeting air, ground meeting water. The lip of the sea, where ocean touches land, wets it. The edge there is gentler than it is with a cliff. The beach is an ambiguous place, water wetting the sand, then backing off, letting it dry. Then the wetting again, over and over.
You walk there, in that ambiguous zone, feet sometimes wet, sometimes dry. Dry sand, wet sand.
But the cliff! Either you’re on land or you’re in the air. The moment of transition doesn’t last, and will not come again. Once you’ve crossed over that line, once the edge is stepped beyond, there is only the falling. Only and ever the being bathed in air. You will not hit. You needn’t worry, there being no land down there. You have left the land for good.
* * *
Mostly, seekers walk around in circles, never really getting anywhere. Just the impression of progress, or at least, difference. Of course, the greater number of human beings never even think to wonder if there’s more to reality than the apparent, than what they’ve been handed for true, for important. They don’t look up, or within, not sufficient to deeply question, in a way that has the power to change the course of their lives.
A way that is free. Human and real, but free. Radically so.
* * *
After a long time of thinking the world was flat, people came to consider another possibility. The earth, it turned out, was round. But this didn’t doom us to walking in circles. It did not doom humanity to being limited to an earthly existence, feet held to the given condition.
The earth may be round, but it still has its edge. Consider the cliff.
Consider too the beach. The place where the land and the water each have an edge, and they touch.
Seekers mean to leave the dry land, the known terrain. Beneath the surface of the water, that other world, are worlds and dangers not known. Coming to the edge of land indicates a readiness to leave behind the comfort of the familiar. There are depths, powerful tides. Creatures (some of them enormous). A person could drown, be consumed.
What most seekers do is walk the edge of the sand, get their feet a little wet, but then skitter back, like sandpipers wary of going too far. Maybe one fine day you’ll find yourself standing at the edge of a cliff, and you’ll come to know the end of gravity.
* * *
I have had so much fun and love in my life, starting from childhood and continuing to this day. The delicious connection I have with my children, my savoring of the glorious outdoors, beloved animals (pets and wild), abundant music, heard and sung.
I wish the same for you, my dear — whatever your own version of pure delight and ease may be like.
Thank you so much (those of you for whom it is possible) for your financial support, whatever the size.