If you are thinking about what you will say at the party, on the way to the party, you are moving horizontally.
If you base your self-worth on your personal appearance, or your monthly paycheck, you are living horizontally.
If you justify your mistakes, you are living horizontally. If you defend your mistakes, you are living horizontally. If you brag about your successes, you are living horizontally.
If you aspire to something you are not, you live horizontally. If you regret the worst choice you ever made, you live horizontally.
Think of everything you do from birth until death. Think about how much of this journey you are in charge of, and how much time controls. 0% vs 100%.
Moving horizontally is agreeing with the passage of time. Imagine if you could resist the flow of time, or stop it all together. Stop for a breath, and truly imagine that you have this ability.
Moving horizontally is "helping" time. Helping it move you from birth through life to death like patrons at Disneyland. It will move you from the entrance of the park to the exit and it's dark and you will wonder where it all went.
Now it's important to remember in this story, time has no motive. It has no power you don't give it. So if anything happens with you through time, remember it is all you.
Now, it's not only because you think about tomorrow, that tomorrow comes. We are flowing in a river, a river that flows horizontally. But while you are here, why spend the time marching?Looking downstream, looking back upstream, looking horizontally?
There is another fundamental direction. If it helps, think about drawing a stick-figure on a piece of paper. Now place that paper on a flat table, and explain to him what direction "up" is. He can only see, only think in 4 directions. But this is where the analogy ends.
Moving vertically is not transversing a new spatial dimension. It's encompassing space and time itself. If I had to give it a direction, I would say, "inwards".
You can't move vertically by doing more, by walking around and seeing more. Not by giving more money, getting more money, or getting promoted.
To move vertically, you simply must be more. You already know how, you know you do. I am not going to tell you how, or where, or why. You already know these things.
You move vertically by being THAT person. More and more each day.
4 comments:
Be all that you already are. Which is nothing.
And everything.
Very true.
I'm glad you clarified this for me, I actually was unsure about the end of this post. Going back and reading it, I thought it could be easily misconstrued to mean something else, basically the polar opposite of what I was intending to say. Be more, but be more by being more empty, more silence. Such is Zen and language.
I left it alone, because it felt true to me. And your comments clarify some the ambiguity it contains. So thanks for chiming in and helping.
Also, very much thanks for participating.
Blogging and Zen are quite possibly totally discordant :)
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