Archive for May, 2014

Back in time… Moab, UT

Friday, May 9th, 2014

“It is a Journey. No one is ahead of you or behind you. You are not more advanced or less enlightened. You are exactly where you need to be. It is not a contest… It is LIFE. We are all teachers and we are all students.”
~ Zen ~

Arches-8 xxx

The bad weather did not quit. From Valley of the Gods to Muley Point, Gooseneck, the winds violent at times was enough to make us move on. A few days in Bluff and now at Ken’s Lake, a few miles North of Moab. The center for all outdoor activities! While indoor I continued reading this French Book called “Presque rien sur presque tout” by “Jean D’Ormesson”, a member of the French Academy of Literature. For some reason, surrounded by this grandeur of Nature constructed throughout the millions of years past, I felt fitting translating a few pages from its beginning. Loosely translated I might add.

La Salle Mountains xxx  

Us, Beings.

Everything and nothing

Before everything, there was nothing. It is a difficult aspect to imagine. Nothing. Empty. An impossible task. Mind blowing. The highest form of rest, absence, delight. Remember, there was nothing. That nothing was however everything, "it" empty of space, even emptiness not present. No light, no time, less than less. It would be wrong to use the word "before" as there was no before since there was nothing. But, there had to be a "was" even if within nothing. This is the biggest mystery ever. The mystery of the mystery of our origins. In confusion, primitive life has opposed the emptiness of the nothing as we now belong to everything. Us, the Stars, the Sun, the Moon, Earth, our ideas and passions. The mystery deepens while thinking about "that step", that "moment" when from nothing all changed to everything. We will be waiting for the explanation a long time.

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The Beginning

Even with the menaces of the now and its continuity including of course the end, there is no nicer dream than a beginning. That first second, minute, hour or day. The beginning of a New Year, a birth, a relationship, a marriage, a new friendship. Those moments are filled with excitement, hope, enthusiasm and freedom unlike too many born and going through their lives thinking backwards, looking at past times versus the future. Every morning the day is reborn with a promise of not yet knowing what it will be as we really don’t know what the hours ahead will bring on. In spite of so much misery surrounding us, including politics, wars, natural disasters, diseases and human malice, Life on earth is indeed a miracle as it starts with every moment present. From the first start to the millionth one, the mystery always goes back to the first one, the one which started it all, the bridge between nothing and everything. We even try to figure out the beginning of the beginning while tracing our ancestors, our habits, memories, our past. There was a spark of light right then and there between the then and the beginning of now. Living the present is questioning those origins.

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Solitude

In the beginning of times, in the beginning of the beginning, us, Beings, must have been alone in that space. There had to be something, yet, we cannot say what because there were no laws of space, time, no causes or effects, necessities or hazards. Everything was forming yet doing nothing. Time was not yet present, rules did not exist to unite what today we could distinguish. Nothing was unraveling in a coexistence and succession present between darkness and lightness forming.

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Boredom

We are allowed, and why not? to suppose maybe with some romantic illusions that the Being got bored throughout its beginning. There was no companionship, no love, no friendship, no uprising. Nothing. The Being had no opposition and nothing distinguished him from anything. He could not experience the preceding nothing or his own eternity without any content or rival. Arrived he birth of time which was irreversible. It is not time itself, but its concept of “no going back” and filling up that nothing. "Time" changed everything, the concept of no more nothing and eternity. Two questions then arisen from the Being. "Why?" and "How?".

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Possible and real?

It would also be possible to think maybe we could have never come out of nothing and remain non existent. The first Being could have not been born. Was it sheer hazard or maybe was Being’s possible existence itself mixed up with the nothing to create eternity with time as its unit necessary for describing such eternity?

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Love

It is necessary for throughout the passage from nothing to everything to bring up a component and relieve the mystery while finding its fuel. It is love. The mystery of love. The being was alone and bored. He could not even continue only loving himself. He is inspired to love others and in return be loved by them. It is loving which ends up holding this world together. Many names have been given by poets, philosophers and others to the components of this world which are only pieces of a puzzle held by a permanent miracle not yet dismantled, but, there is a mutual attachment amongst all those pieces to not at any moment explode in this Universe, and that is love. Love is the cement of it all.

Arches xxx

The Bad

The history however is not all in rose color even if it is love which created and maintained this Universe, world we now live in far from it being the definition of a Paradise. We well know, much opposite is present as this world will never be the Peace and constant well being we dream of. Even though we are all born without a doubt through an act of Love, we also endure much pain, suffering and too many confront death through agonizing moments. Something has slipped in between the cracks when nothing became everything, when Being surfaced right along with love. The Bad. Another mystery. There was no Bad when there was nothing because, well, there was nothing. It is an eloquent paradox to tentatively conclude that it was the freedom of the Being which also brought the Bad, an aspect of Life which prospers amongst us. The question has always been present. Why is there Bad in this world throughout this eternity which is only degrading through the wars of time mostly all based on greed and religious beliefs disrespecting each other.

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Time

We belong to Time. We do not speak of Eternity because its concept is too foreign and we generally do not speak of present times because it is too close to us. We live its moments too often never realizing each single one of them are the beginning of the rest of our Life. Everything surrounding us is tied with Time. Nature, physics, life, history, philosophy, literature, paintings, theatre, music, love, and money. "Time is Money". Time is not eternity, it is a man made measure, a unit we adhere to sometimes too strongly. Eternity is not Time as Time is the refusal of Eternity. If Time did not have a beginning and an end, there would not be Eternity. It is not in vain that religions and popular wisdom speaks of "end of times". Time is a giant bubble we enter at birth and leave through death. Our own individual bubbles held onto the giant bubble that wraps us all. It is all so enigmatic as a one time philosopher said "If you don’t ask me what ‘time’ is, I will know what it is. If you ask me what it is, I will not know". Today’s time is tied up with space. Earth rotating, the Moon rotating around the Earth which itself rotates around the Sun taking one year. The thousands of years, centuries, months, weeks, hours and seconds are arbitrary inventions which can be changed at the blink of an eye, and have been changed many times often for political and religious powers. What was time when the Sun, the Earth and the Moon did not exist? Nothing, as there was nothing. But… it took time for time to become… time. What was it that started it all throughout that millisecond from nothing to everything? Another mystery. Maybe the biggest of them all.

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Stay well…

Spirit

Release date to be announced soon…

Cropped final for DEESTAMP for book

Ara and Spirit