Thinking that friendships are among our most precious riches in life.
A place where we can always go to find support and a warm heart to lean on.
Where we know that we are accepted just the way we are.
People in whose company we don’t need to change a thing about ourselves,
be any different, smarter or wealthier, have better-paid jobs
or have just returned from a trip to the Maldives,
in order to qualify for a place at the table.
Finding that mindfulness is golden.
Because it feels so immensely good simply to be present,
together with others who are present too.
Mindfulness can give us that sense of
emotional satisfaction and wholeness.
As in completely satisfied and whole.
A strange sense of calm spreading within.
Not the sense of calm that we know
might be shattered in an instant.
No; an almost existential, brilliantly luminous calm
that we know is ours to keep, in our innermost core,
if only we can be present in the moment
or share the moment with others
who do their humanly best to be focused and present.
And then sometimes, in the company of good friends,
time dissolves.
And there is so much that feels brilliant and good, inside and out.
Those moments that we sometimes wish would last forever.
What the Danish philosopher Grundtvig might have called lifting up a tiny corner of eternity.
Einstein suggested that time and space may dissolve,
be suspended under certain circumstances.
Or that our sense of time and space is altered when we operate at the speed of light.
Quantum physicists believe that we two-legged beings are in fact light,
because we are consciousness, and consciousness is light.
Hmmm
At the speed of light
Oops, there goes the table where we sat, laughing our heads off and playing games for hours,
just a moment ago,
slipping away into the beyond
Bang, there go the chairs, where our preconceived views and notions were seated so comfortably, seconds earlier,
whisked away into the galaxy.
And hey, now we see,
gazing straight through suits and silk dresses,
plaid shirts and water resistant trousers,
through running tights, bicycle shorts and wetsuits,
through lies, strategic cob webs and painstakingly constructed self-images,
through beautiful truths and mad illusions
through you, through me, through us.
Perhaps to behold something resembling light.
We hardly believe our eyes, and yet we do,
because right here it seems so obvious
that each of us is brilliant.
Brilliant stars in the galaxy.
Ah, seems like time just slipped away too, and space as well
So here we are now
We are now
We are
Are
Perhaps mindfulness, brilliant friendships and genial relationships simply act as our GPS when we aim for the speed of light and unity with everyone and everything. Who knows?
And if that is the case, I for one would like to see 2016 guided by just that.
A sense of unity with everything and everyone. And sustainable actions to keep it all together.
There is so much each of us can give while we grow.
Simply by being who we are.
There is so much good that we can do for each other,
if only we take the time and remain mindful enough to seize it.
And science now confirms the age-old truth that
giving gives back, that making others happy makes us happy.
I wish you a happy New Year!
All the best,
Helen
THE ERIKSEN INSTITUTE
– bridging science and consciousnness
www.heleneriksen.com