Tag Archives: time abyss

Threads of Time

Connection weaves a web through time and space…

One moment bleeding into another. One breath bleeding into another. One life bleeding into another. One civilisation bleeding into another. One species bleeding into another.

(Sorry for all the blood.)

Is it all smooth and continuous, or can one thing and another, one moment and the next, be differentiated in discrete packets, in staccato quanta? Does it all just depend on how we look at it; our minds creating borders in an endlessly unfurling flow…?

Or is everything knitted together by a complex pattern of unimaginable interdependence. Pluck one string, and the whole universe sings in harmony.

Doesn’t everything just depend? The Mind makes Things out of Change… 

We discern a vast time abyss, yet all of history is expressed in the present.

We connect first to disconnect; once disconnected, connection can follow. Connection is separation. Separation is connection.

We connect in movement, our disparate parts becoming sinuously one.

Repetition – developing a feeling for connection, but moderate and balanced. Too much repetition becomes mindless, robotic, and unproductive.

Optimum pace. Too fast, the connection is lost. Too slow, the same, especially if the breathing is not anchored and smooth.

Optimum tension. Too tense, the connection is lost. Too loose, the same – a disorganised mass of flesh-porridge. But with a gentle, relaxed stretch of the sinews, everything can link together and synchronise. A coiling snake. Kelp in the current. A cast line. An arcing whip.

Connection is subtle in Zhan Zhuang, in San Ti Shi. Connection is profound in meditation. A disconnect from the ordinary mind. An immersion into a greater awareness that was never missing, just unperceived.

Connection is beautiful when expressed in the movements of the dancer, the athlete, the martial artist.

Attention. The mind neither wandering nor overly focused. Concentrated, but not intense. Diffusion without total entropy, maintaining a malleable, movable awareness that shines softly on parts yet still illuminates the whole.

Connection is the senses. Connection is an exchange, through membranes, through fascia, between neurones, from channel to channel, from link to link, from outside to inside, from inside to out.

A neuroscientist: “Connection is oxytocin. It’s serotonin.”

A Chinese Medicine practitioner: “Connection is a function of Lung Qi. Of the Yang Qiao Mai.”

Connection is pollination. A hummingbird’s beak. A bee’s legs.

Connection is wind and bough. Tide and cliff. Heat and rain. Rise and fall. In and out.

Connection is ubiquitous. Connection is eternal.

Connection is the heart. Connection is support, comfort, warmth, belonging. Connection is a smile.

Connection is our DNA, our bodies, our touch, our words, our expressions, our gestures, our breath, our heartbeats. Connection is synchrony. Connection is ebb and flow. Inhale. Exhale. Each merging into the other.

Connection requires individuals. Connection requires commonality.

Connection requires practice. Process. Rhythm. Flow. Continuity. Breaks. Movement. Relaxation. Articulation. Differentiation. Wholeness. Space. Difference. Homogeny.

Connection can be explored deeper and deeper. Just when you think you are connected, another layer emerges. Deeper we dive.

Two people fight. They connect to each other. They connect to the ground. To the same earth.

We can connect with each other, with Nature, with our own bodies. We can disconnect from them, too. And, from time to time, we probably should. Aloneness is universal. But aloneness is not loneliness.

Aloneness.

All one-ness.

Connection is an inherently good and desirable thing.

… But if I connected myself to the mains supply…

And separation is, of course, always bad…

… Except with regards to eggs when making custard…

Echoes

Standing at the bottom of a rocky canyon, the man yells out. But all he hears is his own voice, ricocheting, reverberating, distorting, multiplying, returning – again and again and again and again again again again…

All he hears?

All?

We neglect the echo. We dismiss her importance. Narcissus spurned her. Left her to rot in her own misery. Left her bones to transmute into the living rocks of the canyon. He could only hear his own self; he scorned his Echo.

Pan did not. Pan adulated her song. In jealousy he maddened the shepherds so like wild beasts they hunted her down, ripped her body apart, and strewed her sundered corpse over the land. Still singing. Still resounding. Even in death she sang.

She still exists – an echo…

Listen. The earth still resonates with her song. Listen to the canyon. Listen to the drums, pounding in the cave. Listen to your heartbeat, reflecting the beat of others’.

See this group, this tribe; feel them, their hearts adjusting to align their rhythms. One beat, one rhythm. We are echoes of each other.

Listen to the heart, pounding in the womb. As the embryo divides and forms, eight extraordinary vessels unfurl and reflect the beat of all that has gone before. Fish, amphibian, lizard, mammal, human… all of life on Earth, from before the dawn.

We are all echoes.

Echoes of our ancestors, beating our drums. Yelling.

Echoes of each other. Reflections seen through a kaleidoscope lens. Distorting, multiplying, returning. Hello! hello hello hello hello hello…

In the crucible of meditation, we sit and breathe and focus the mind within. Down into the depths of the body it plunges, down into the autonomic heart of the self. Breath, mind, and body, in perfect resonance. Then…

We are still. We let go. In silence we sit and listen to the echoes.

We let the echoes do their work. Our bodies harmonise with her song.

Our body.

We dance. We move. We nourish, regulate, purge and cleanse, stretching the body, clearing and giving flow to its channels, finding a new harmony. A new song.

Then we are still. We let go. In silence we stand and listen to the echoes.

Stillness. But not nothingness.

There are the echoes. The echoes of movement. Growing fainter. Fainter. Fainter.

Can you still hear her?

Listen.

Grow quieter. Empty out yourself. Quieter, still.

Can you still hear her?

Her song, a web of delicate filaments that hold the entire fragmented world together in harmony. Pluck one strand and the whole instrument reverberates, distorts, multiplies, returns…

Beneath the breath.

Beneath the heartbeat.

Beneath the mind.

Beneath Pan’s maddening flutes.

There, in the flickering cave, the drums cease. The shadows stop dancing. All our ancestors stop and listen. They hold their breath. All the life that ever was pauses to listen to Echo’s silent song.

Standing at the bottom of a rocky canyon, the man yells out. But all he hears is his own voice.