The Tumble of Time
No answers, only showings.
Not by the out-breath nor by the in-breath does any mortal live. By a mystery immortal do we live, on which these two breaths depend. Come! I will show you this secret formulation!
— anonymous Vedic rishi
Early I rise Early I see this great world before me. Parts and pieces accumulated and swirling a soft forming -- I walk out I walk toward and so too, all the rest.
Onward… Backward… Here…
The scene is bleak the world is barren The light burst before The rock The water The whisper of wind Where are you here? The parents The days before Their flirt and their poise Energy erupting The playful laughter Where are you here? The gentle woods Millenia before Dead of night Chirping bug Trickling stream Caterpillar in search of a midnight snack When do caterpillars sleep...? Stay attentive. Raccoon on high Where are you here? If we were to truly capture time Mason jar - Tupperware - In the vase on display - We would forever see the self With different dress. You are here. Born From Which You’ve Came
How does it come to be?
Where were you before you were born? A log, decomposing in a Slovenian forest. Where were you before you were born? A baby in a basket flowing down the river Nile. Where were you before you were born? A hummingbird in the California desert. Where were you before you were born? A cup of coffee sipped in a diner outside Harrisburg, PA. Where were you before you were born? A wave breaking on the Aleutian Islands. Where were you before you were born? Within the five loaves, within the two fish. Where were you before you were born? A dandelion seed blowing across Selma, Alabama. Where were you before you were born? A zebra outrunning a lion in the Sahara. Where were you before you were born? Salmon reaching sea. Where were you before you were born? Salmon reaching stream. Where were you before you were born? Fungal strand - reaching reaching reaching - joining fungal strand. Where were you before you were born? A drip of sweat traversing the brow of Da Vinci as he passes brush strokes over Mona Lisa’s upper lip. Where were you before you were born? Snow melt of Cerro Torre. Where were you before you were born? The lily pad as frog jumps off. Where were you before you were born? The great tree under which the teacher rests.
From where does it start, to where does it continue?
If you think of the universe as a process, you’re one of its innumerable sub-processes. You had a beginning, and you will have an end. What happens at those points in time isn’t a transition between existence and non-existence, but a change in composition. You’ve been going through those changes since you were conceived. The cells in your body aren’t the ones you were born with. They’re continuously dying and being replaced with copies that are more or less accurate. The body you have now isn’t the body you had seven years ago. It’s been completely replaced in that time. By midlife, this has happened several times. Change never stops; not before, not during, and not after the phase in which you’re self-aware. Your sense of identity isn’t something you came with, but something you learned after you arrived. That too was a gradual process. You didn’t exist as “you” before that happened. The building blocks that moved into place in biochemical processes to make “you” possible for a time did exist. They’re as old as the planet we live on and the star it revolves around. They’re as immortal as the universe (which is to say maybe not completely, but close). When you cease to exist as “you,” they’ll disperse and eventually recombine as parts of other organized manifestations in Earth’s biosphere. - Martin Reyto, of Budapest.
Ground it…
“Before I shaped you in the womb, I knew all about you. Before you saw the light of day, I had holy plans for you" Jeremiah Death is certain for one who has been born, and rebirth is inevitable for one who has died… We are unmanifest, manifest, unmanifest. Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2
So… what might it mean?
This is a life All filtering and tumbling toward now But So elusive I cannot even find now When all I can see is me In every inch and in every part I am erternally... All is eternally... Resurrected.
Energy is finite!