Walking on the beach, one foot after another, leaving footprints where we go, we can look back and grasp at the impressions our feet left in the sand. Impressions appear and disappear. The sand imprinted with our unique footprint in time will lose the impression. The sand where we walked was never separate from all the sand on the each, or all the sand in the universe. Impressions come and go. We remain.
Can we trust the impressions?
We can try to avoid impressions, or we can try to cling onto them. But the very avoidance or grasping itself leaves impressions.
There is only one way to trust impressions. That way is through opening to them, allowing them in, surrendering, without interference.
The Window of Now
Sensory impressions happen in the present moment. The can live only in the present moment, just as life itself can be found only in the present moment. We cannot feel the softness of a child’s cheek except in the moment of touch. We cannot hear a bell that will chime later. We will not taste the wine of the coming summer in the spring before that. We cannot think the thought we had yesterday. We can only think an impression of the thought of yesterday.
Thought and feeling happen now. The rest is memory and imagination, impressions left by impressions.
To trust impressions, we need to trust the present moment. The present moment can’t be held, controlled, or repressed, it can only be accepted. Through the present moment, all impressions flow. Impressions have no beginning and no end, while at the same time, they are never stable. They occur outside of the mental conditioning of time, and as such are deeper components of time itself.
When we ask if we can trust the wind, we ask if we can trust the impressions of the wind. The impressions of the wind can manifest only in the present moment. In trusting what is truthful in the now, we trust the present moment which is to trust the impressions happening here. Anchoring our trust in the now, we lose our fear of impressions, which means we can allow our senses to open.
The more we can open space around the identifications and personal identities appearing in the present moment, the more we can open to the love which lights up eternity.
The more we can release the impressions resonating through all our attachments, needs and longings, the more we can be here for peace which echoes through infinity.
The Window of Here
What is this entity, this inside world of who we are, that is able to open? Who is it, the one that is able to allow the spontaneous opening? Where is the opening happening?
If impressions were to be received within a finite space, sensing would not be possible. Without sensory perception, there are no impressions.
Sensing happens here, within infinite space and at zero distance. From the perspective of human experience, it is infinite on the outside, and also on the inside.
Even the touch of a finger on the cheek, although seeming to be initiated at a place on the skin surface, is experientially composed of impressions. With one touch, there is no inside or outside, only the touch itself, at zero distance.
A touch of a finger on the cheek is an energetic happening through the body, a subtle system that exists in an infinite space. This impression of touch is carried at speed by the central nervous system to the mind where it lives as memory. The greater the spaciousness around impressions, the greater the freedom of the senses to open as organs of consciousness. If we allow and trust the infinity and zero distance of feeling, then the touch of a finger on the cheek can be experienced as bliss.
The mystery of feeling can be uncovered through the realization of the impermanence of spatial borders. The sensing of subtle dimensions of life can be unfurled through the letting go of temporary ideas of form.
The experiential “Here” has no inherent limitation. It is never elsewhere, it is always ‘here’, as the first point of at infinity. Feeling is always “here”. It is never far away. Even the feeling impression of distance is “here”, at zero distance.
The Hallway of Being
What is the nature of the experience of being here, outside of the conditions of time and space?
Unconditioned by time and space, could this inner being ever be private, or exclusive, with an individual identity, shape or size? Just as we are one in life and being alive, could this being in me be sourced in the same source as the being in you? If so, can that ‘being‘ ever die?
In opening the mysteries of being, we begin to receive impressions of a more subtle nature. Our five senses, habitually turned to what we believed was the “outer” world, turn inward. As they do this, the sense of feeling becomes the leader.
Being here, now, we can close the visual input from our eyes and relax within. We can sink through the silence of the mind, which is here, unconditionally to any thought. We can rest into the comfort of the body, unconditionally to any particular physical sensation. Behind all we hear, all we see, all we can touch, all we can taste or smell, is a felt presence, a presence unconfined by space and time.
The more we are able to allow this presence or sense of being, the more deeply we learn to relax into it as home.
The more we relax into it, the more we can open the confines of time and space.
The more we are able to relax and open the limitations of time and space, the more we are able to receive subtle impressions from deeper layers of ourselves.
The more we come to life, the more life comes to us.
