Chasing the Horizon

I turned on the radio today and streaming over the airwaves from a local station, was Alan Watt’s voice from an old recording, talking about how there’s a certain tendency to plan our wholes lives for later. First, we look for the perfect college and then the perfect job, and we save for retirement but by then we’re too tired to fully enjoy it; always living for the day when we will finally experience the perfect amount of happiness, until the future finally shows up on our deathbed and it’s all gone.

This brings to mind the concept of chasing the horizon. One of my favorite poems on this topic is by Stephen Crane (1871-1900). It goes like this:

I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
“It is futile,” I said,
“You can never—”

“You lie,” he cried,
And ran on.

Tuning-in to Now

The piercing sound of a drill, people loading up a car, rustling of palm fronds, whirring of a helicopter flying low in a blue sky—these are some of the sounds that drift towards me from my open window as I take the “lesson” of today to heart and tune-in to Now. This is one way to ground yourself in the present moment, by simply keying your senses to your immediate surroundings. As you lightly pay attention, you’ll notice, especially with sound, that it’s always changing. Whether pleasant or not, the notes come and go. By now, the sound of the people and their car are gone, as is the helicopter, though the trees are still rustling in the breeze and someone is still diligently drilling away. And now there’s another helicopter in the sky… and now a passing truck, and on and on. Now. Now. Now. Always changing—outside us and within.

“Enlightenment doesn’t care how you get there,” Thaddeus Golas (The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment.) However presence shows up for you in the moment is how it shows up—that’s where you begin—and by paying light attention to whatever arises, you instantly connect more to the energy of life—for this is what life is presenting to you right now.

The other day, I discovered a really comprehensive article on the Quantum-Touch website, written in 2015, titled, How Does Quantum-Touch Work? In this article, Richard Gordon is quoted from his book Quantum-Touch: The Power to Heal. It is worth repeating some of it here, as you’ll see why in a moment.

It Starts with Love

Excerpt from page 32 of Quantum-Touch: The Power to Heal (2006) revised edition:

“Healing work is all about love, and the practitioner learns to hold a vibratory field of this love. To clarify my terms, when I say, "love," I am not speaking in the traditional sense of the sort of love that a mother has for a child, a husband for a wife, or about a winged cherub with a bow and arrow. I’m speaking of a more basic form of love – one that is more innate and intrinsic."

“Have you ever watched children play? They seem to always say, "Watch me!" So, whether you are from the child’s culture or any other culture, whether you speak the language or not, if you sit there simply watching that child, he or she will feel loved. Simply giving your attention to a child is automatically experienced as an act of loving. This is what I call nonenculturated or nonassociative love because it has nothing to do with your background, your race, religion, politics, or other beliefs you may hold. Quantum-Touch is about being present, which is an expression of your essence.”

Let me repeat that:

“Quantum-Touch is about being present, which is an expression of your essence.”

Richard Gordon

Founder of Quantum-Touch

When a child asks you to watch them play, they’re not asking you to hyper-focus on them with laser attention, but rather to be there with them, fully present in the moment. The more present you are within yourself, like a calm sea, the more they feel that and the more they experience love/ openness/ connection.

Same too, when we lightly give our attention to our inner and outer environment and are just present with it, a connection begins to happen and what we call, “love,” just starts to flow. It becomes reciprocal and we instantly feel more in the flow with whatever shows up.

Coming Full Circle

Though my radio is now turned off, the sound waves that brought Alan Watts into my experience today are still vibrating in the echo chambers of infinity, prompting me to do a quick internet search to pull a direct quote from his book, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety (1951):

“The real reason why human life can be so utterly exasperating and frustrating is not because there are facts called death, pain, fear, or hunger. The madness of the thing is that when such facts are present, we circle, buzz, writhe, and whirl, trying to get the “I” out of the experience. We pretend that we are amoebas, and try to protect ourselves from life by splitting in two. Sanity, wholeness, and integration lie in the realization that we are not divided, that man and his present experience are one, and that no separate “I” or mind can be found.”

love/ openness/ connection

When we are fully present in the moment, whether we’re alone or around people, animals or nature, a connection is instantly there – no longer seen as separate, any perceived differences start to melt away and we just experience peace, love and the connection of all things. If we try to perceive it with the mind, in a way we’re separating ourselves, but if we allow it to wash over us kinesthetically without trying to interpret it, using our seventh sense of proprioception, greater harmony begins to wash through us, and begins to become its own reward.

It’s not that we don’t plan for the future, but we do so from the present moment, and allow it to unfold. If obstacles arise, same thing. When the future thing we plannned for finally arrives, again, we experience it however it shows up. Then, one day, when our end draws near, we can smile with contentment that we lived our best life. For we lived.