Impermance

This word has been on my mind lately.  And then I "Googled" it.  First of all, let me state that I just love that we as a nation have turned a company name into a verb.  Here in America, that sort of shit happens all the time and it truly defines "American" ingenuity and culture to a great extent.  I am in favor of it, in many cases.


So, impermanence....well, Webster's will say that it is the state of being impermanent.  Not so helpful.  But it gives a host of wonderful synonyms that I just simply fell in love immediately.  Ones like: ephemerality, evanescence,  fleetingness, and transience.  Wow!  I had no idea.  I mean, I had an idea, but it was so tempered and restricted by my cultural upbringing and education.  But these words together, afford a new perspective on the word impermanence entirely.  I get giddy thinking how might I include such words in my every day language.


"Oh, excuse me; I was caught in a state of fleetingness and did not realize I cut your off in traffic."  "My evanescence simply does not allow me to hear your complaints at this time."  

Life, as we know it, could really all be very much imagined.  In our heads.  The "tapes" that replay over and over.  Much of what we experience isn't real in the sense that it's actually happening; most of it; is a result of what we perceive and project.   We're so busy with the mind and the voices, judgments and fears in our heads that we are not actually living in the very moment of now.... And that, is our disconnection with our state of impermanence.   


Why Impermanence, you might ask...?  Well, gosh, do I have to be so blunt?  Is it just me, or is life a daily experiment in how we relate and react or respond to impermanence?  The very nature of day turning to night and then back to day is a constant reminder that our world is in flux.  As I write this blog, we are coming towards the Autumn Equinox; the time when days become shorter and shorter until we reach the shortest day of the year.  Then suddenly, everything changes again, and it becomes Spring and a new cycle of life, day after day repeats itself. 


I was thinking about the impermanence of Facebook and what an ironically indelible manifestation it has created in our society.  We post things, that, for that moment in time seem so important, yet, as days, even now, seconds pass by, the prominent passage we've interjected into the flow of information, which seemed so necessary, so obvious, soon disappears into the vast "older posts" dominion of cyber-life.  It's lost in the cyber-river of information on the web; which in itself, is an ephemeral world we rely upon for connection to others; ironically instead of interacting with others face to face.  My goodness sakes, my mind is spinning!


For, just four months ago I was lamenting on the oppression I felt from one individual, but, today, I can proclaim that I miraculously find peace and solitude in the "what is". The impermanence of life eludes us daily, yet becomes so evident in a historical context.


I am taking yet another fantastic class with the Ventura Center for Spiritual Living.  This one is called, Foundations, and it's really about the foundation of the development behind Science of Mind (SOM); how it was formed, and the core set of principles and beliefs.   I was reading one excerpt from a Reverend Christian Sorensen, D.D. (and I apologize for not knowing who Mr. Sorensen is or what D.D. means....); however, he was speaking in regards to grace.  And, again, the focus in SOM is on what is, not what one perceives.   


"To rest in Spirit, one's desires vanish and needs disappear because every need was met before becoming aware of it.  Living by grace allows Spirit to express to it fullness.  In this pure state of being, prayers are no longer for something, because that means there is a desire.  Prayers become simply listening; this allows the power of the God-thought through.  Of course it's the "I" who first starts the listening but that "I" dissolves into the Wholeness and the prayer becomes a Divine Proclamation. This graceful approach lets in the warmth, color and love of God's kingdom made manifest as your life."   

I spent a lot of time in my life wishing for things and then lamenting when they didn't manifest.  I am realizing that once you put a label on it; once you attach yourself and all your desires, judgments, etc. to it, you limit it, you bog it down and it has a hard time manifesting because it wasn't set free to be what the Universe knows it to be.  The way to peace is the way of impermanence because you release all expectations, doubts, fears, etc.. and just allow yourself to be, in this very present moment, that is, for only this moment and then it's gone but the beauty of it all is that a new moment is always there for us....


The way of the Buddha will talk about 'impermanence' as "an undeniable and inescapable fact of human existence from which nothing that belongs to this earth is ever free".  I don't think they mean we are eternally damned to this life as it is.  I think they mean that our desires and human tendencies trap us into our "constructed" reality.  When we free ourselves from those desires, we become, like a true enlightened Buddha, free from the entanglements of life as we (us humans) know it.   Pema Chodron would say it was the Ego.  The ego, according to her, is the root of all suffering, because it will try to narrow down definitions of our thoughts so that it can control them; thereby controlling our actions, thereby securing it's own future.   


I remember when I read Siddhartha for the first time. What struck me most from that story, was when the Buddha was sitting near the river and he noticed how the water moved by so quickly and that it never was really ever "there".  There was a constant impermanence to the river, just as there was to time, and therefore we too are impermanent.  If there was no time, then there must be no suffering.  If there was no suffering, then there must only be joy.  I think that is sort of how it went.   I am still a little confused on the simplistic thinking that if there is only impermanence, then there is no suffering and therefore only joy... I mean, we experience pain and suffering...don't we?  Isn't it real when it is happening?  If we lose a loved one, can you really say that the pain you feel from that loss isn't real? 


I guess, what it may come down to this: the Universe holds Everything.  In It there is joy and suffering, loss and gain, plenitude and lack, love and hate, etc.   We, as beings, conscious of our existence, get to choose what we want to feel and therefore express in our lives.  It's that choice that makes the idea of impermanence so fertile.  We get to create, moment by moment, the life we chose.  What a blessing that is.  Whoever gave us that gift should be praised, no?  


I'm not saying, run out and scream "Lord Jesus, you are my Savior!" for that really has no relevance in this discussion. (and personally that gives me a whole host of unpleasant reactions, none the least, require inter-venal injections of heavy doses of wine). 

What I am saying, however, is that, we, as humans, on this planet, have been blessed with so much.  Natural resources provide for us; space and time allow us to experience and access those natural resources; we have opportunities to interact with other beings with which we can love, create with and learn from.  


We, by no means, are a perfect civilization; however, we do have one thing that unites us, and that is that we are human, here on this planet, with Spiritual natures or tendencies.  We could try, perhaps, to find the commonalities vs. looking only at the differences.  Starting with our own intimate relationships, we may just be able to transform our very communities and thereby transform something grander.  It's just an idea, right?  But, seriously folks, what else do we really have?  

Isn't he gorgeous!?

So, finally, a quick shout out to my ex-husband, who after many months of being, what I would publicly say, difficult, has turned quite radically into the person I fell in love with over 4 years ago.  And that's not to say "it was all his fault alone".  No, I had a grand hand in the storm we created.  It's as if the tragedy we passed through has allowed us to rediscover our true selves again. Amidst the rubble of our past suffering, we've found that in the present moment, there is a lot of love. And, Ziggy, our dear son teaches us the value of impermanence every day.  

And this I've learned: no need to cry anymore over spilled milk. It's time to move on....time is, after all, moving on too..... Tick-tock, tick-tock.....