I am finally in Bogota, Colombia. When I conjured this dream years ago, this was not supposed to be the time, the place, nor was it the circumstances; but my truth is that, nothing has ever been manifested the way that I anticipated, perceived, or expected. However, it always comes at God’s perfect time, within God’s plan and exactly as he sees fit for me. And for that, I can only be grateful!
It’s been an ethereal ride getting here. The highs and lows, mostly memory now, have not failed to leave their scars well embedded in every part of my consciousness. How do you wipe tears away from the past? How do you rejoice in the joy of today, without remembering the pain of yesterday? I really do not know how to answer that. If we could see where we are going and plan each step according to a vision, an instinct, even an internal drive, would we still not miss some of the subtle picturesque landscapes that makes each step vital to our existence? Besides, I do not even know how to classify the twist, turns, rollercoaster highs, and submerged lows. Can you really say this was not, but this was? Can you ever, in one breath, experience it all and make a conscious determination that what was, is now far better than you had hoped? Pain does not work that way, and joy cannot be a singular road; it is just against universal law.
I have taken the last 20 or so hours here in Bogota to allow my mind to have some peace. My inner motives are still trying to find their conscious direction, but the subtle voice in my head, like a loving taskmaster, keeps reminding me to let time have its way!
It is time, which has brought me here. It is time that rules all discourse. It is time that has shielded and at the same time thrown me into the lion’s den. And, it will be only time that reveals the meaning of its method and the madness of its existence, in relation to my time on this plain.
I have come to love time for its never ending, ever present, ever significance to my arriving here, at this moment on this day, on this page.
Yes, only time will tell.
A long, long time ago, I cannot even remember when, a small internal voice called my name. I must have been lost because I can only gather snippets of that experience now, but I would also have to add that that voice started with a hum in my heart… a sound that grew to a fervor as age and time collapsed into each other.
I was raised by a very powerful soul who endured her own time warp to bring me into this world, and the sweetness of that inspiration must have clearly laid the path of faith for me to hear the calling. How else can one have the courage to endure, the willingness to seek and the faith to persist when seemingly the sound is not constantly heard and yet never silent. She breathed not only life into me … she gave me the power of faith!
Every aspect of every moment is accumulative of this one. I live in the present only because of the past. I move through each moment sometimes with a focus I can’t comprehend, but mostly, I move too quickly to truly grasp its meaning. That is why time is such a factor, and why it is most relevant now. I have come to understand that time is an ally, if given it’s true reverence. Living a life of timelessness is within itself a marking of naked spirituality. Being here nor there is a dualistic approach to life that can be intoxicating and can lure you deep within its aimless winding and empty illusions that are filled with so much fantasy. So much so that it keeps you from your true destination. I did not always think like this. Kotch Magazine.
Perhaps, that is the secret to youth. Is it that apparent endless space of time? But the latter years of my life make it clear; Time is an ally, one to be fully engaged with, one to respect and to revere and one to hold closely to, without letting it slip away.
ALL you have is time! It is the only constant in life that never leaves you. Yet, we never know what to really do with it? Yes, we plan so much of our time and live by its marking sun up, sun down, but do we really know anything about time, other than we are born to it and die from it? What does time have to do with anything, when forward movement is our only option? Is time truly all that matters? Questions that loop are not endless … they require a clearing of thoughts, so that answers can glean new horizons.
Is life just a cycle of time? We plant, we sow, we work, we rest, we remember it as much as we hope for it! And on and on it goes!
We have no time or we have all the time in the world. We grieve it and we rejoice in it! All are passages of time, and yet what an illusion time is.
Time … it is not that I have it or that I must be engaged in it all the time, it is that I have to commit to it and give myself to it freely with purpose, for its function to my benefit. I know this now, far more than I have always claimed. Still … truth is, I know nothing about time, and still it is my master.
There is nothing like having time and recognizing the attention that it deserves!
Time…. is like a conspiracy theory: who really puts the meaning into them? Does the universe really conspire to put one some place at a certain time, or is it all just conjecture? So many times, I have personally asked myself that, as if in doubt! Could it possibly be that time has again selected this moment for me? I want to shrug my shoulders and say who knows? But the fact is, it is I who knows, that for whatever purpose, here I am.
It is at this time that I find myself examining many past inspirations. Moments that all culminated to conspire and create this one. Yet, I never seem to have a clue when it is happening? I still do not know why time takes it time, when I always feel like it’s too late for most and never enough for some to do the things I hold so dear.
As you age in time, facts become harder and harder to deny while truth becomes narrower and narrower to define and still time seems wider and wider to grasp. Even when you are surfing on the coast of what seems like timeless madness, there is a glimmer of a mirage on the horizon. Time never releases you!
Time has revealed many, many things to me, specifically in the last few years. This is why I call it an ally today. Somehow, one day I submitted myself to time. Well, that’s not entirely true! Time seduced me really; by giving me snippets of truth, both, past and present and revealing little tiny secrets along the way.
Snippets… that came in many versions of themselves, with great variety and distinction. They were never clear or concise; they always prompted more questions and the need for more time to fully grasp. That is until today, when Time has asked me to stay and to listen and not try to decipher or perceive. This is when seeking has become no longer an urge based on limited time, for time has conspired to unite all that was, with all that is and, I Am, simply…. along for the ride!
I have come to the conclusion that time is a factor of existence, not relative to truth, but conjoined for the sake of enlightenment and man’s attempt to have it measured!
We created time so that we could fully understand the recorded meaning of our existence.
There is a verse in Chapter 2 of the Bhagavad-Gita, which is said to contain all the truths; our truths, the truth of our existence, that … The Eternal Reality of the Soul’s Immortality is what time conceals!
How does one process this? How can I, sitting in my bed, figure out the time I have left, when this time here … is not the only thing that matters?
How do I truly grasp and comprehend … that all of time is an illusion!
Yes, our bodies will whither and die, time and time again, but was the soul ever born, will it ever die? The ancient’s answer is unequivocally NO!
So, all I have as an answer, to all my many questions is …. I have been here forever! And imagine what statement that is! I mean, you would think I would have gotten it right by now? And yet, here I am asking these questions repeatedly without a final conclusion, without a reasonable explanation, and without even the memory of living through the many explanations I have previously encountered.
There is yet, no conclusive answer to any of my time revealed questions, but I am finding nuggets of priceless wisdom, along the way!
Time condensed, turns into time well spent as it evolves into eternity.
Some time has passed since my journey to self-discovery forged a trench into the meaning of my search. Traveling the roads of Colombia has led me to see within the measurement of time, a factor to my existence and relevance which is a reality that I never fully grasped, until, I landed right back where I started, in a place within me that I have always called home…. My conscious self!
It has taken many roads through exterior winding country sides, to reach the inlays deep within the mind. Ours is a mind that has always sought a certain level of enlightenment that I know resides in a place deep within. There have been countless hours, days and months of thought upon thoughts, through conversations with my “sub conscious” self, that only my mind, which is constantly evolving, could detail, as “we” arrive at conclusions that only I could decipher, upon acceptance. These thoughts are too real and true to ignore; too alive in me to not finally bring me to a point of awareness that I could not deny.
Even using the roads less traveled, through the endless roads traveled in my mind, could not have actually prepared me for the depth of what I have come to understand. It has taken everything that I am, to play its part and unfold an opening revealed in the truth that is me. A truth I can barely understand, much less try to share as knowledge, with all its haunts, which consumes every corner of my daily existence.
AND YES! … Once again time has conspired to unite all that was, with all that is and all that will be…..and I AM… simply along for the ride!
Life is rarely disappointing when you are willing to hold on to it for dear life, ignite the presence within and express ultimate purpose! It is a hell of ride every day to exist in a world that is vast yet small, infinite and finite all at the same time. Even when the venture is never further than my own inner thoughts, within the folds of deeper thoughts of consciousness, life shows how extraordinary and unbelievably incomprehensible it is.
Yet, the more I discover, the more I want to be within all of its wonder, till it unfolds all that I desire and require. To sit here, even more still than “present,” without journeying through time, to be in the folds within my thoughts, and nourish the parts unknown and yet somehow familiar gives me a purpose, I never anticipated.
We live within the unconscious emotions of life, a place where survival comes into play every time we breathe, more often without conscious thought or even so much as a question as to its origin. We seek to find and then we hide out of fear, the very discoveries within ourselves of the greater truths that define our existence. We seek refuge by creating illusions projected out in time, so that our experience of life makes sense. Yet, we are born into a senseless world that we never understand, as we exist to survive. We inherently create a world that alters our own perception of truth, so that we can witness our physical reactions to our make believe discoveries, as we perceive them to be truth, those truths that we then determine, justify who and what we think we are. We hurt, we bleed, we cry, we suffer … but is this quintessentially our truth? Moreover, does the universe, which created us, actually owe us an explanation?
What I have collected as thought through this journey, has taken me time within a non physical space; it’s a discovery of a non-physical truth that is veiled and illusive. It exists in a time that is condensed within my mind, which I cannot fully and eloquently decipher, but is more real, then any reality I can conjure.
To my ignorance I give in and state, “We have no control over life or time,” and all of our existence is an illusion that conceals a greater truth we are meant to reveal.
Life is in ways as predestined as it is free of so called destiny. We organize and form the basis of our understanding of existence as something that happens outside of us, while we remain present in every thought that exists within us, which then contradicts, even our own understanding of life’s specific meaning for us. Life is a dichotomy within a structure that is illusionary yet susceptible to life.
My uncovering of these thoughts within my thoughts has led to understanding a principle which lives within a realm of lower existence in me. A realm that I now know, I have allowed to supersede my own higher consciousness! This gives me permission to create the illusion of a belief; that life is happening by me through the terms I prescribe to it, as I rise to the challenge of survival to evolve within it, while ignoring the very meaning of the higher consciousness in me.
This might be a good place to clarify what Higher Consciousness means to me.
Higher consciousness is a state of elevated awareness and perception in which a person has a deeper understanding of the nature of reality, the self and the various spiritual aspects of life that play an important role in one’s personal evolution, psychological development and spiritual enlightenment.
It is the, “Who am I” question, within the question of life!
This question has led me to recognize something I know but have failed to comprehend, as I go about the business of creating life for myself. I am not the creator of life. I am a participant in the greatest most intricate existence of being in its detailing of its own existence and if I were to truly acknowledge this, I would know that my evolution is the evolution that life seeks to experience itself.
It is an experience steeped in many scenarios that creates many responses for the various challenges it faces no matter what the consequences may be. Life makes allowances for these consequences which can be evaluated through their many different results, as they unfold, while the one thing that persists within every aspect of evolution is “being.” Life seeks to know itself through the joy of knowing that it is. It is alive to constantly evolve and discover its best possibility for the greatest good. Think about it! Life does not labor in labor for the sake of labor; it finds the best reason for its evolution. It finds joy to continually create something new and exciting as it evolves to a higher purpose of itself to serve where it is going in its higher realm. Life simply cannot evolve without a reason for being, which is the thrill of what that prospect could be!
Writing and processing this, is cathartic and liberating on so many personal levels; a torturous labor to revisit with clarity and to be able to communicate on another level, more so a confounding practice to live by, with all its truth and fullness.
By growing consciously into higher consciousness, the universe comes increasingly into being, and synthesizes the one and the many, the ego and eco, the individual and interdependence of all things, for the purpose of evolving itself to be a better version of self. And to do so, life just evolves with one perspective in its minds eye, and that is to express joy within itself as in creating in continuum, knowing it can.
“When the creative power of the universe becomes conscious of itself, it manifests as joy. You do not have to wait for something “meaningful” to come into your life so that you can finally enjoy what you do. There is more meaning in joy than you will ever need. The “waiting to start living” is one of the most common delusions of the unconscious state. Expansion and positive change is more likely to come into your life if you can enjoy what you are doing already, instead of waiting for some change so you can start enjoying what you do.” ~ Eckhart Tolle
Take a breath, process my analysis and the words of Tolle and come to your own conclusion!
HAVE YOU BEEN HAPPY THAT YOU ARE ALIVE? WHAT HAS THAT PROMISE HELD?
If you are happy (regardless of what consequences you find yourself in) then this is your truth, this is where you are meant to be today, evolving a better version of yourself.
Moreover, the time is perfect to face your own higher consciousness and to love yourself beyond what is your physical reality. Finding joy in your purpose to just exist as part of this grand evolution that you are in, be it conscious or unconsciously, is a part of a higher consciousness that is there within you.
I know it takes time to adjust your brain! But right now you should be saying, hmmm, not so far-fetched…. to find the freedom to finally concede that there is a higher consciousness (and yes I draw no line between Universe, Spirit, God and Consciousness) that is always trying to teach the lessons needed to personally evolve, within an evolution that has always existed.
This is, for me, the ultimate release of the stress of survival and the acceptance of living. Having this knowledge brings me the greatest joy, knowing that higher consciousness has my back, and is there for my very personal highest evolution, if I submit to its unfolding pattern and its pursuits within me.
Can you see how this entire awakening of knowledge can transform you?!
Can you learn something from the fact that it is not what happens to you (though you do need the experience of it to decipher it), but that it is how you grow from each experience of what happens to you, that gives you the greatest opportunity to be happier in your pursuit of living life to the fullest?!
Allow this greater understanding to unfold within your thinking daily, within everything at every moment of your day. Find that higher understanding and expression through thoughts of bringing the joy alive in you!
Fully accept that life was pre-destined to evolve within and through you. Separate from the emotional judgments you prescribe to each life event and to what you are experiencing. Witness the destiny in your life! In other words, stop being centered in the thought of your own self-survival!
Life is a dance, which requires an acceptance of what is happening, as it is happening, without the need for judging as it IS happening to YOU. Always bear in mind that Life is also happening to everyone in your presence as well. PROCESS THIS! It will leave you with only one conclusion; your destiny is parallel to your life, but only in terms of how you perceive it and your willingness to evolve within it. This is what the ancients have been awakening in us, through their call for higher consciousness in awareness, faith, religion, and philosophy!
This is where God, Spirit, Universe and higher consciousness become one.
This is the “I AM” in the “I am” coming to fruition, through the understanding that it cannot live separate from the life source that creates it!
There is a duality that is evident as we Awake and as we reach the higher levels of consciousness. This is where the veil seems more transparent; allowing us to envisage the reflection of the greatness that created us, and this overwhelming sense of Awakening, creates a super ego that sometimes interpret what is happening to be about self as an individual, when in truth, we are part of an ecosystem. The Awakening is actually meant for us to acknowledge that….first!
Here is where we still fail to see the whole picture. Here is where we only see the “I” in the “I AM,” this is where we allow the notion, the dichotomy of life to convince us that we are the masters of our lives. This is where the “we got this” becomes the judgment of our own existence, failing to acknowledge our connection to the rest of the essence of life; a life that is Almighty in evolving through its own history, which is greater than the sum of all the parts known and unknown.
Except from a highly evolved spiritual level it is impossible to conceive our complexity, our connection, our own singular vastness and value, within the greater scope that makes each of us codependent, and part of this evolutionary source, especially when we continue to foster the opposing belief that we are solely in charge of our own destiny.
What if we could learn to separate the emotional aspect of “self” and fully envelop the thought that we are connected to every single living aspect and atom in life because it was made to sustain us, not test us? What if we could accept that it was created for us, as something destined to plays its role in our evolution? What if we could meet the fundamental perception of evolution as something not egotistical, self-centered or emotional? It is a concept that is already with us in our belief system, in our religious concoctions, in our scientific existence. It is there in ways some of us cannot fathom; teaching us how necessary it is for all to grow within evolution, but it is shrouded as a necessary part of that growth, even in higher consciousness.
Can we live that consciously? Can we live in acceptance of life as it is happening to us, with the understanding of what it means – that even the minutia of the smallest decision we make, carries the weight of the greatest decisions we make.
Science has proven that butterflies fluttering in Asia can and do affect every aspect of us personally… when it flaps its wings on the other side of earth! We need to evolve our thinking and believe this with even greater resonance!! It is a proven fact that the butterfly effect, affects a molecular change to the weather pattern that exists, and can directly affect what we wake up to each morning.
It is a concept seemingly small yet too big for our minds to wrap around, using our limited capacity to understand the fullness of it, so too is the ability to conceptualize who we are at the nucleus, especially where our focus remains on survival, which makes it more difficult to unearth our “hidden” higher consciousness!
We are quantum physics. We are human “beings” that contain something greater within, along with an undeniable thread called evolution, which runs through everything ever created, for us, through us, through time and in motion.
It is this concept of something higher and greater which we call by many names: Sun God, Isis, Ganesh, Spirit, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammad or any name we chose to label our chosen God but nonetheless that which connects us to the singularly of its purpose to evolve. There exists within us, a stillness of thought, that is consciously aware of the presence of that higher consciousness with its sole purpose to expand and be greater than itself. It is a singular purpose that crosses all beliefs and all consciousness to connect to the component in you, which is necessary to raise us to the awareness of the source which gives and sustains life! And even though we create our own perception of self to mean something specific to us as individuals or groups, we judge each other for their own secular belief, which does not change the fact that we are all driven by the same purpose; to seek a higher reason for our existence on this plain, that proves that it was not randomly created.
The awakening has been slowly making its way to individuals who have been left at a crossroads at this moment in evolution. We are on our way to an enhanced existence as we are evolving into higher consciousness. We are awakening to a truth that we already innately know within our soul’s own knowledge. An experience that awakens us brings us to acknowledging this higher consciousness that exists within, that is guiding and moving us forward toward its destiny.
The purpose of all evolution can be described in three historical phases of awakening: Ego – Alertness – Consciousness.
The first step is where civilization discovers itself, secondly it evolves to recognize its potential, and thirdly, the awakening comes to help with the unfolding of consciousness which brings us to the unequivocal truth and understanding of “I AM.”
Our evolution was designed to reveal itself through the unification of human existence within higher consciousness.
Perhaps this is what the perceived Armageddon best describes as the ultimate battle – the one that cannot be avoided. It is what many are naturally seeking to understand as we continue to evolve from a singular thought to a plural thought, within a singular concept. It is the ultimate challenge to all truth, to all science and to all religions and it is that which man must evolve to comprehend. A singular truth that comes down to ONE thought, ONE hope and ONE destiny, which can only be revealed in heightened consciousness.
Human evolution is inseparable to all that is; therefore it is a purpose within itself that must be accepted as being part of the whole process.
In the end, as it was in the beginning, source can only be one thought as its basis to exist and it is Perfect in higher consciousness!
We are all witnesses to our own words, worlds, and facilitators to our own truth as well as the truth of others, even as we evolve our thinking as individuals, yet inseparable from anything and anyone that has ever existed.
We are destined to persist to know and acknowledge, no matter what, that our very own consciousness is derived from a collective higher bearing that is always present in us, to guide and teach through our own trail and errors. Life has created us and was created for us, even as life creates through us as individuals. Within it all is a freedom that becomes more relevant when expressed as joy for “being,” and gladness for being a part of a life of purpose.
This is the thinking and the message behind faith, religion and even science. This is what the ancients have been communicating through the wisdom of Ganesh, the expressions of Gaia, the research of Aristotle, the stillness of Buddha, the love of Jesus, the indivisible oneness concept of monotheism in Islam, the self-awareness of Galileo, the mathematical equations of Sir Isaac Newton, the theory of evolution of Darwin, the relativity of Einstein and the countless figures in history that have contributed, whether though human existence or transmission of soul perception. Visit us at.
WE are here for a reason! And we all know this to be true!
Henri Almanza is a Culinary Consultant and an internationally known Interior Designer
