Time is Energy

Time is energy.

Bastante Solipsis Marquez knew it, and overstood Now to be the moment of power.

 Bastante lived in the now.  He was in love.

He loved life; he loved breathing in and out and moving around in a body.  He loved the sun coming up in the morning and the stars coming out at night.  He loved trees and the earth and most people and usually a good thing or two happened during the day that reminded him of the importance of loving others.

Attitude, breath, and posture.  These were the keys to success, he had decided.  The Buddha had said something along those lines, he knew; something about right thought, right speech, and right action.  They seemed to correlate, more or less.

Bastante had suffered much in life, as have we all, and after great debate he had decided to overlook it.  No fear, no hurt, no suffering.  There was only time, which was energy.  His work was to always face the now fearlessly and peacefully, with confidence, compassion, and cool.

Anticipation.  Bastante's task (as is ours, dear reader) was to face each day, each moment of now, with appreciation and anticipation.  We must believe that life is good and gets better, for the mind is a feedback loop in relationship with the cosmos.  Thoughts are things, and the thoughts we put out are the things we get back.

Bastante had grown up reading the Bible, but he had never overstood the part where Jesus comments :  "To those that have, more will be given, but to those that have not, even what they have will be taken away,"  until he heard of the Law of Attraction.  The Law of Attraction says that we get what we give:  Our mind is constantly churning out thoughts, and if our mind is constantly grateful for the depth of beauty, love, and interdependence found throughout human life then we continue to receive even more.  But if our mind is ungrateful, or even unaware, of the miracle of life then we receive no miracles in our lives.

Jesus could have said, "To those that feel they have, more will be given, but to those who feel they have not, even what they have will be taken away."  Thoughts are things, and these thought-things carry a gravitational charge, seeking a match.  Putting out good thought-things brings back good experiences, and putting out good thought-things that radiate gratitude for abundance brings back more abundance.

Bastante knew that Christian Conservatives would kill him if he ever tried to preach the gospel of the Law of Attraction.  Jesus had gotten himself killed for preaching it, among other things, apparently.  It seemed that nobody in power wants us to know that thoughts are things, because if we start mastering our thoughts, the market won't profit from endless craving anymore.

As it turns out, the market profits from selling remedies for suffering.  None of these remedies work, however.  Suffering still exists.  The only cure for suffering lies within our minds:  we must experience suffering with a positive and nonattached attitude, full of faith that life is good and gets better.  If we don't believe it, we have to fake it till we make it.  Bluff bluff bluff.  Even in the midst of great suffering, great agony, great hurt and the deepest of wounds being torn open, we must accept that life is good and gets better and appreciate the value of living through such powerful, transformative experiences.

The market cannot sell us a positive attitude, and with a positive attitude, it turns out we don't have that much use for the market.  Spiritual truth was bad for business, and preaching the truth got people killed.  Like Jesus.  So Bastante laid low.  He was like Hamlet, pretending to be a harmless goofball, looking for a way to end the tyranny of the Man.

Anyway, being confident, compassionate, and cool was easier said than done.  Bastante faked it constantly.  Training the mind was like training a mule, he knew, and success came only by being more consistent, more determined, and more stubborn than the mule.  Bastante's mind would rebel against this artificially induced positivity every chance it got, and leap violently into pits of victimhood, insecurity, and self-limitation.  It was an old habit that had served him well.

There was nothing to do but pull the mind out of the bad-thought-pit, against its will and in defiance of the very personality inhabiting it, and set it back on the path of gratitude, humility, and acceptance.  Like a bucking bronco the mind would fight - the ego itself would perish if its cherished negative behavior patterns were successfully discarded!

Yet Bastante saw these patterns as counterproductive, and worked diligently to eradicate these enshrined, self-sabotaging neuroses.  He witnessed his own personality change, as an ego perished and another was born, over and over again.  It was much like watching a cloud in the sky; one minute it looks like a spaceship, and the next minute it looks like an elephant doing a kegstand, then you blink and its some kind of birthday cake, and then...

I Am is always changing, for I Am is change.  I Am observes I Am just as water is poured into water.  Bastante knew himself to be an artificially constructed personality, self-created for purposes of categorization. He himself was beyond categorization; he was infinite.  He knew that this self-categorization was inherently artificial and ultimately limiting; the only thing about him that didn't change was his name.  And sometimes his smell.  And even they changed, too, occasionally.

But anyway.  It was time to go to work.  Bastante folded his legs, sat up straight, and began observing respiration sensations on the small patch of skin beneath the nostrils and above the upper lip.  Slowly, his mind quieted, became silent, and let go, and emptiness dawned like the Sun...