"When we are mindful, deeply in touch with the present moment,
our
understanding of what is going on deepens,
and we begin to be filled
with acceptance, joy, peace and love.”
―
Thich Nhat Hanh
“Delight in itself is the approach of sanity. Delight is to open our
eyes
to the reality of the situation rather than siding with this or
that point of view.”
―
Chögyam Trungpa,
The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation
When
I growing up, being called a "space cadet" was not a
good thing. Unless you were an astronaut-in-training at NASA
(or, perhaps, a Trekkie), the term was a put-down. The folks who didn't pay a lot of attention to the seemingly endless concerns and activities of high school and college life, just weren't cool.
Although I didn't
realize it at the time, some of these space cadets were actually marching, perhaps even dancing, to the beat of a different drummer. In doing so, they had a leg up on the rest of us.
Why?
Our legs were fully engaged
spinning the hamster wheel of an invisible, but very captivating, mind
cage. Scrambling to conform to the rat race of the "real world," we couldn't afford to just space out.
Compelled by our thoughts and feelings about doing it right, going for the
gold, being all we can be, etc.,
most of us were continually trying to get with the program presented to us in a culture steeped in capitalism, scientific materialism, racism, and all the other "ism's" that serve to oppress the human spirit.
From the time we woke up until the time we fell asleep, we were being conditioned by the world around us to disregard the spiritual dimension of life.
Sadly, most of us internalized the values and norms the mainstream society long before we
had the experience or the skills to realize what was happening. We didn't see that our society's
"conventional reality" was a house built on the ever-shifting sands of
what the Buddhist call the eight worldly concerns. Rather than taking the time to "consider the lilies" as Jesus had counseled and explore the spiritual dimension of our lives, we became increasingly fixated on the material and psychological "needs" presented to us by the mass culture.
The
space
cadet seemed not to take such things that seriously. It seemed that he or she could
frequently let go, relax -- and journey elsewhere.
Aboard the Starship Enterprise
These days, I will gladly accept the title of space cadet. I've found that space, what some folks call "inner space," is the final frontier. In
fact, as we voyage in the present moment to the precise edge of this ever-unfolding frontier, we see there is actually no such thing as elsewhere. We come to see that inner and outer space are merely concepts, two sides of the same coin. And that coin is flipping eternally though a boundless and infinite universe of awareness. In this realm there is no winning or losing. The coin never lands.
Once I got a taste of the boundless and infinitely forgiving space at the heart of reality, I knew that I was all in. Although I've had some crash landings and have encountered some space monsters along the way, I'm grateful to have signed
on for the voyage. Most every morning, I choose to step off the hamster
wheel for at least an hour -- and go into free fall. I simply sit still for about an an hour.
Some people call what I do meditation.
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