The Bridge Between Time and Eternity
Francis Lucille
Temecula, California
September 8, 2007
Go deeply into the present moment.
The only cause for suffering is our refusal or rejection of that which the present moment is offering.
We want it to be different. We want it to be according to our own projection, to our own personal plan. We reject everything that goes against the personal plan and we want everything that is in accordance with our own personal plan for happiness.
The problem is that the personal plan for happiness is flawed and doesn’t work. We have had enough experience with it in the past to know that it is flawed and that it doesn’t work. We have inherited the personal plan for happiness from our parents, from our friends, from our surroundings. And if we look at them, did it work for them? And if it didn’t work for them, why would it work for us?
If we welcome the present moment, we will discover that in the present moment there is never a problem. The problems and psychological suffering arise only in relation to the past and to the future of a personal entity. In the now there is no such personal entity. That’s the beauty of it. Only the now is real. The past doesn’t exist any longer and the future doesn’t exist yet, so only the now is real. In the now there is no personal entity.
The personal entity exists only as a rejection of the now.
Ask yourself, “What is so unbearable in the now?” We assume that the now is unbearable only because we have never experienced it to its fullest. In fact, it is quite bearable. In fact, the now is at peace and free from problems, free from suffering. All we have to do is to meet the now in our welcoming.
The now is the bridge between time and eternity. When we stop oscillating between the past and the future we start walking on that bridge.
The bridge is extremely narrow for the now is like an extremely narrow interval between the past and the future. At the other end of the bridge there is Presence, timeless, eternal.
When we stop rejecting the now, things become simply neutral. It is not that they become pleasant. Appearances are neither pleasant nor unpleasant. They are somehow irrelevant in terms of peace. They become neutral. We become indifferent to them. They become as neutral as the ‘tick’ and the ‘tock’ of a clock, ticking away in the room, measuring the silence, measuring the Presence. Because the rhythmic sound is so neutral, it doesn’t grab our attention for too long. Our attention gets liberated from the object and meets itself as Presence.
These words are like the sound of the clock. In and by themselves, they are just vibrations of little importance, revealing the timelessness from where they came, to which they return.
You cannot make an object out of this timelessness. If you do so, you lose it. You lose the freshness, the immediacy, the intimacy of it. You cannot rest on any sensation. You cannot even rest in the present moment. Your eternal repose is in the Presence which is already here, which you already have because you already are it.
We are that which we are looking for.
Remember to always take your experience to its true level, which is the level of Presence. Take it back to Presence, because that’s where it takes place.
Remember that no matter whether there is a world outside or no matter how many worlds, subtle or gross, there are, still the reality of our experience is unavoidable, undeniable, totally certain.
If you abide in the reality of your experience, which is your true nature, your true being, what can happen to you?
Everything that arises in the mind and in the world is this Presence exercising its infinite power to create, to sustain, to dissolve. So take the experience of your mind, the thoughts, to their true level, which is Consciousness, this Presence. There is no mind at that level, only thought arising in Presence. During the presence of the thought, the thought is the Presence. The thought and the Presence are one, because there is nothing separate from Presence, nothing outside this Presence, nothing that is not this Presence.
In the same way, take your bodily sensations to their true level. Their true level is not the body; that’s not where they take place. Their true level is not the mind. Their true level is the Consciousness.
And when you do so, there is no mind and there is no body. When you do so, you go straight to your deepest Being, to your true Being.
Francis Lucille
2007
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