Presence Journal Awakening: Lower the Flags

Lower the Flags

Again, one of us has crossed the horizon into the Great Unwanted. Some sadness is present, flavored by unleashed compassion for all those who have lost loved ones in the inevitable course of life. The compassion also warmly embraces oneself for close friends who've recently passed away. It seems that when more years accumulate, the Great Unwanted becomes ever more tangible. Counterintuitively, this observation doesn't create fear or anxiety of an end looming somewhere around the corner. Instead, sincere curiosity arises for life, and the Great Unwanted as part of life.

Life is the only experience one can have; there are no memories of the time before birth, and only some vague expectations concerning the Great Unwanted. Those expectations are entirely the mind's projection based on ideas that have roamed the Earth for millennia and seem to have very little connection to any experience in life. Only blankness and absolute emptiness prevail before the first memories. The same emptiness lingers within all tomorrows—all the memories that have yet to be formed. Whenever and wherever one is, there seems to be only life, as if there was no such thing in existence as the end of life.

Of course, one experiences loss and gain in the course of life. At first, the stories of loss and gain seem to govern all days, year after year, from birth to death, as surely as the sun rises in the mornings and sets in the evenings without a hint of uncertainty in its cycles. Yet, a closer look reveals something curious: all the stories of loss and gain are ultimately ideas and memories like waves arriving at the shores of time.

As one aligns with the present moment, the heart and core of all experiences, one finds no loss or gain. Their magnificent absence is so unspoken and against everything taught in modern societies that the mind is reluctant to accept it. Even though the mind is a master of denial, there's truly no need to escape from any sensations of the moment into stories of loss or gain. The present moment can include all sorts of sensations ranging through the whole humane emotional spectrum. Here and now can present the most painful grief and sadness or the most delightful happiness and joy. A closer look reveals those sensations are not matters of loss or gain but simply occurrences in the heart of the moment. Momentarily, the sensations build up force like waves arriving at the shore, and eventually, they'll withdraw and dissolve in the ground of being like water seeps through the sandy beach.

Sometimes, it's just time to let go and stop dwelling on memories and expectations. Time to lower the flags when witnessing the last of the frontiers. Time to honor those who have crossed the horizon into the Great Unwanted, and wholeheartedly welcome all the waves that hit the shore.

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