Grounding into the Week
In Circular Time
Welcome to this Present Moment.
Did a new one start just now, when we began this meditation? Not sure?
Let’s imagine for this meditation that the Present Moment for each of us is cumulative. Let’s imagine it as long long gentle wave we can look back at and see it’s gathered up everything, all our experiences, everything that has ever happened and brought it along for the ride.
Now slowly turning around let’s look at toward the future. Anything there? Is it empty? Or is it all laid out already. Is something there, but it’s vague. What does it look like to you?
I think it might be a little bit of all that.
This is a start-of-the-week meditation. Can you remember your very first thoughts when you woke up this morning, Monday morning? And the next thoughts after that.
Did you summon up a Monday template and start being that in the Present Moment?
Try to remember last Monday morning. Your first thoughts then and how things unfolded after that.
There were differences. Last Monday wasn’t the same as this Monday. But what do the differences mean? Do they mean you are heading in some direction? Or going around in circles looking at slightly different details each time?
People felt the weekly cycle a long time ago, a rhythm of rest and action. They said we should rest one day out of every seven.
The annual cycle is marked by light and dark.
We are now in a time of less light every day. All of Nature knows this and gets in sync. Prepares to hibernate, depending on the latitude. Uses the Fall template to make up the Present Moment, preparing for the next interval.
To every thing, turn, turn, turn, there is a season, turn, turn, turn
Picture the gentle wave of the Present Moment flowing into the natural rhythms, the behavioral templates, of the world we live in at every level.
Picture yourself extended in Time moving through the cycles, noticing what’s different going around it now, carrying all your present moments with you as one.
But this is a Meditation for Monday
Monday is about restarting. About overcoming inertia after the rest we needed.
Monday is also about getting back to things that might have meaning for us. Seeing people we only see in part of our Present Moment, the Monday through Friday part.
I have seen 3,784 Mondays. There are part of me and part of this Present Moment, all of them.
Sometimes I just Did Monday. Put my head down, switched to auto-pilot and powered through the template.
A Mindful Monday is noticing the resistance, noticing not wanting to overcome inertia. Noticing everything as we step into the Monday template. Any excitement about people or projects. Just noticing makes the difference because the noticing is now in the Present Moment.
Noticing makes other ways of being the Monday template this time possible.
Noticing expands where the Present Moment can flow.
The cycles are real and the templates we’ve grown used to have value used with awareness and intent.
They aren’t just made up.
What is made up is our reaction, our attitude about Monday in the weekly cycle or being Winter in the annual cycle, or being Really Old in the life cycle.
We may have more freedom in how to be Monday or how to be Winter or how to Really Old than we have let us believe because we were in auto-pilot.
Let’s finish by imagining ourselves as a point in the gentle wave of the Present moment, picturing yourself right at the leading edge, where the future is becoming Now. One dimension.
Now extend yourself in some direction to become a line. Which direction did you go? Where is the two dimensional line relative to anything else?
Now pump yourself up, give yourself a shape in space, all three dimensions. Did you make yourself a person? Or just a 3D shape?
Now, how will you extend yourself in Time, into the fourth dimension?
The photographer Eadweard Muybridge showed us extended versions of ourselves in time using ingenious photo-burst recordings that anyone can do now with a long-press. His recordings reveal aspects of ourselves that are difficult to see any other way.
Muybridge showed that horses can fly. Not for very long, but there are frames, Present Moments in time, with no hoofs on the ground. The horse is flying.
We didn’t know that until we could see the horse as a persistent being flowing through time.
What do you do that you haven’t been able to see?
How can it make you more free to make up your Monday?
Tom Nickel is a Top Writer on VR on Medium: https://tomnickel.medium.com/
