Spirit of Now

“Waiting Is”—a phrase immortalized in Robert Heinlein’s celebrated sci-fi novel Stranger in a Strange Land.

For most of us waiting is not easy, often a bore. Waiting for a bus or train, we look for something to do to pass the time. Sitting in a doctor’s waiting room, we idle away the minutes thumbing through magazines of no particular interest.

We want the waiting to be over with, so that we can get on with whatever is the next task at hand. Yet in treating waiting this way, we deny ourselves a most valuable opportunity.

Pure waiting, not waiting for any event to happen, just waiting without wanting, can be a profound spiritual practice.

When you simply wait, not waiting for anything in particular, not wishing things were different than than they are, the mind relaxes. And, as you let go of wanting, you will probably find your awareness of the present moment expanding.

Many, from Buddha to Ram Dass and Eckart Tolle, have encouraged us to be more aware of the present, to “be here, now”. And numerous practices aim to help us become more aware of the present. Most, however, lead to focussing of the attention on some aspect of the present—the breath, a visual object, a mantra. The focus may be effortless, nevertheless it is there, a very faint directing of the attention.

With pure waiting, on the other hand, there is no attempt to be aware of any particular aspect of the present. Instead, with nothing to do, no particular thing to wait for, there is space for more of the present to reveal itself. We begin to notice aspects of our world we were not aware of before—the sound of a clock, or a distant conversation; a tree gently waving in the breeze; the touch of clothes against the skin. It does not matter what. It will probably be different every time, simply because the present is different from one moment to the next.

As you get the hang of simply waiting, you will find yourself being present in a relaxed, innocent, undirected way.

So the next time you have to wait for something, use the time as an opportunity to become more awake. Instead of waiting for that something, simply wait. No expectations. Simply stopping, and waiting, with an open mind.

Nor do we need to wait for a late bus or be sitting in a “waiting room” before we can practice waiting. Any moment of the day we can choose to pause for a while and simply wait.

Waiting without expectation for whatever is next. Maybe a bird flies past the window. Perhaps the refrigerator starts up. Or we find we have wandered off on some thought. It doesn’t matter. Waiting is.

You can start right now. Pause. Take a breath. Relax… And wait…

Love your self. It’s a common refrain.

One way to interpret this is loving who you are—accepting yourself just as you are, warts and all; having compassion for your shortfalls, while rejoicing in your gifts. Loving ourselves in this way relieves us of much self-judgment and self-criticism.

We can also love ourselves at a deeper emotional level. We can take that feeling of love, which dwells in our hearts, the feeling that we often connect with loving someone else, and allow it to flow towards ourselves. In this case we are not loving our manifest selves, with all their various qualities, we are simply experiencing love for our self. Culturing such feelings of self-love brings deep ease and relief.

Beneath this individual self there is what some traditions call the “true self.” Others call it the pure self, the unconditioned self, the universal self, no-self, essence, pure being, or true nature. It is that which is always there whatever our experience. It is the essence of what we call “I”—something so familiar and personal, and yet on deeper inspection totally impersonal, without any qualities or character. It is the pure am-ness that we know when the thinking mind becomes still, and we rest in primordial awareness.

The taste of this essential self is delicious. Mystics have written volumes of poetry about its blissful nature. Enlightened ones have urged us to discover it, and to soak in the calm and joy it brings. Knowing this true self is so delightful we do need to develop or culture love for it. We cannot help but be in love it with it.

Much of our thinking takes the form of self-talk—conversations we have with ourselves, inside our minds.

Clearly, the original root of this verbal thinking is speech. Speech gave humans the ability to communicate with each other, share experiences, learn from each other, and amass a collective body of knowledge. Using verbal language within our own minds brought many new abilities, including the abilities to rehearse what we might say to another, to recall past conversations, and to plan future actions.

This gave us a whole new way of meeting our needs. We can understand the world around us, how it works, and take steps to improve our circumstances. This is the present root of so much of our thinking.

Needs and Wants

If you look at your own thinking, you will find that a good proportion of it is concerned with meeting a need of some kind or another—the needs for security, approval, love, companionship, status, respect, control, stimulus, comfort, etc..

For many of us, such thinking is going on nearly all the time. Sometimes, it may just be in the background, but it is there, occupying our mental resources. Most of it is a complete waste of time and energy. As Mark Twain famously remarked, “My life has been full of disasters, most of which never happened”.

Looking more closely, you will find that many of these thoughts concern imagined needs—things we imagine we need in order to be happy. We imagine we need someone to regard us in a good light, or we need some new clothes, or we need to eat some gourmet food. These are not true needs; they are “wants” or desires, or in some cases simply preferences. But still they occupy our thoughts.

When we believe we need such things or situations in order to be happy, we become fixated upon getting them, and this leads to no end of thinking about how to get the world to be the way we believe it ought to be.

The Roots of Discontent

This, as so many spiritual teachers have pointed out, is the root of our much of our suffering. By telling ourselves that things need to be different, we create a sense of discontent, a dis-ease.

This is the sad joke about human beings. We all want to find greater contentment, but many of us are so busy worrying about whether or not we will be content sometime in the future, we never allow ourselves to be at ease in the present. Instead, our minds become preoccupied with planning and scheming, worry and anxiety, hopes and fantasies. And when things don’t turn out the way we think they should, we easily fall into anger, grievance, judgment, or depression.

When we do manage to get whatever it is we think we want, we may indeed feel better. But we feel better, not because that particular thing has made us feel better, but because we have, for the moment, stopped creating a sense of discontent. We are no longer disturbing ourselves. But before too long we find something else that is missing, and again fall into discontent. And again start thinking about what we might do to make things the way we want.

Return to Natural Mind

Careful observation of the mind reveals that focusing on a particular thought limits our perception. We become lost in thought, unaware of much is what going on around us. And also what is going on within us; a mind caught up in self-talk is less likely to notice how it is feeling, or how the body feels. Moreover, all this thinking results in a background mental tension. There is a sense of tightness in the mind, a constriction in our consciousness.

The world’s mystical traditions repeatedly affirm that the mind in its natural state—that is, before it is filled with thoughts, worries, plans, and regrets—is a mind that is at ease. In one way or another, through meditation, prayer, dance, ritual, or service, they seek to undo the damaging consequences or over-thinking and return us to the state of ease that is our spiritual birthright.

It was recently shown that elephants passed the mirror test for self-consciousness. Along with chimps, orangutans, and dolphins, they recognized that they are seeing themselves in the mirror. However, other animals that may not pass the mirror test in its hard form, i.e. a positive recognizing themselves, do pass a softer form of the test in that they do not interpret their reflection as that of another.

Many times I have watched pet dogs and cats walk past a mirror. Occasionally they give their reflection a glance, but mostly they take no notice. In so doing they demonstrate that, although they may not recognise themselves in the reflection, they do know that they are not seeing another dog or cat.

I suspect this more rudimentary “not-other” awareness (as opposed to true self-awareness) is to be found in any animal that drinks from water. As an animal leans forward to drink, it is likely to see its own reflection face to face. if it interpreted this as another animal looming close, it would probably back off (and, if continually repeated, die of thirst). For such creatures, there is a clear evolutionary advantage in the inhibition of the “other” response when seeing their own reflection in water.

This more prevalent “not-other” awareness is probably an important step in the emergence of true self-awareness.

We stopped the boat about two miles offshore, and switched off the engines. Immediately we could hear the singing of a humpback whale. I have heard them underwater many times. They are the ocean equivalent of birdsong in a forest; their moaning songs playing in the background, sometimes coming from miles away. But to hear the sound in the air is most unusual. It meant the whale was very close indeed.
So we donned our gear and slipped in. And there were its tail flukes, fifteen feet beneath us. Singing humpbacks usually hang vertically, head down. Swimming down, I could see its immense body hanging motionless below me.
And now the sound was intense. I was not just hearing it through my ears; my whole body was resonating with its song. The moaning base notes were vibrating through my chest. My muscles were quivering with the shrill chirping.
After ten minutes or so, having completed a cycle of its song, it gently surfaced, still singing, and looking curiously at these strange leggy creatures that had appeared next to it. Then it sank back down, head first, to continue singing.
Since then I have listened to whale songs continuously for many hours. (To listen, see below) Hearing long stretches of song, I’ve become aware of how each phrase of the song is repeated with a slight variation, progressively transforming the phrase into something completely different, and then continuing to transform until it ends up back where it started. That is one complete cycle. The next cycle is a slightly different variation, and the next slightly different again.
Listening to the singing I have began to get a sense for how it might feel to be a whale. It could, of course, all be anthropocentric projection, nevertheless, when I hear those long yearning calls, or those bubbling stochato chirps, I imagine that the way I feel is the way the whale feels. Whalesong is a window into the whale soul.

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Listen to whalesong. There’s a hydrophone hanging from a buoy off the coast of Kihei in Maui, which broadcasts live whalesong on the net.
http://www.live365.com/play/whalesongmaui
More info at http://www.whalesong.net

The water pipits have just returned for their winter sojourn.  In the morning they often skim the water in flocks of 50 to a 100, turning this way, then that, seemingly as a whole.
Many times I’ve watched flocks of birds wheeling together, and wondered if this is truly a collective phenomenon, a consequence of some group mind, or whether some message passes through the flock too fast for me to notice. Water pipits provide an opportunity to consider this more closely. They are brownish on top, but pale underneath. When the flock turns it changes from brown to pale, or vice versa.
If the message to turn was propagating through the flock in some manner, then it would take a small, but finite, time to do so. I should be able to see this as a color change sweeping through the flock. Time and again, I have watched closely looking for such a change, but all I ever see is an instantaneous shift in color.
The flicker rate of the human eye (and brain) is around 1/20 sec. Events slower than this are seen as separate; faster and they appear at the same time. (Films and television present images faster than the flicker rate, so that you see the image moving smoothly.) So if there is any propagation of information through the flock, it must all take place in less than 1/20 sec, or else I’d see the change as a rapid sweep of color.
This doesn’t prove it is a collective phenomenon; it may be that information is propagated much faster than my eye can detect. It would be interesting to take a high speed film of them—at 100 frames/sec, or even 1000—and see if there is any shift across frames. If there is no discernable movement of the color change at that speed, we would have very good evidence for a group mind. (Anyone have a high-speed camera they want to loan me? )