When we are busy

From: 2008.05.02 07:00 - Following the River

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Pema Pera: I’ve never been as busy as I’ve been the last few weeks .
Maxine Walden: yes, I can imagine that there has been so much coming your way…coming into the SL but RL space as well…Impinging on nearly all the waking hours…
Pema Pera: yes, but there is a bright side too. In this way I am learning to be very efficient. I could easily have spend three or four times more time on anything I’m doing now but circumstances just force me to be hyper-efficient
Maxine Walden: oh, I am sure, very much so…just trying to appreciate…oh, yes, efficiency, interesting how efficient we can become…and priorities can become clear as well, ie how much time for each thing
Pema Pera: It is fun to watch myself, in a bit of a detached mode, doing this
Maxine Walden: interesting to watch yourself…becoming so efficient, zooming through things
Maxine Walden: and what priority things take on when time is so precious
Pema Pera: yes indeed. And there are two sides to it.On the one hand, I feel I’m learning to become better at triage, at deciding what to do next of all the things that cry out for attention. In the sense of keeping a short list of highest priorities in the forefront of my mind. On the other hand, I also feel very strongly how there is a flow that is not rational. Away in which there seems to be a River that has its own intelligence. A River, the Universe, a form of local representative of Being I might even say.  And to the extent that I am in tune with that, things seem to go by themselves in what feels very much like wu-wei but hard to put into precise words
Maxine Walden: that is very interesting, and I am familiar with that River as you mention it during certain situations in which rather extraordinary things are being asked of me.
It is rather awesome and one feels rather carried along by the river as well as by one’s more efficient mind. The flow seems to take away to some extent what decisions need to be made
Pema Pera: yes, both are important, the rational part and the non-doing part. It is not a conscious planning only — and it also is not a completely letting go in the sense of closing your eyes and letting the Universe take care of it all
Maxine Walden: oh, I agree entirely
Pema Pera: It is more like trusting the flow and willing to be an instrument that is being played by the . . . Universe/River/Being . . . and my rationality is part of me-as-instrument
Maxine Walden: yes, yes, I am reminded of experiences in which the more I have been asked to do the quieter I have been able to become and then something ‘other’ seems to gather a kind of momentum and my choices seem clear and the perspective wider so that when I attend to then obvious perhaps big things all the littler things just flow…like being in partnership with the River. Interesting how it is to become more quiet and spacious inside the more RL stuff there may be to do…that spaciousness may be like observing oneself.
Pema Pera: yes, a sense of space is key!
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Pema Pera: we talked about roles we play and I mentioned that playing a role being conscious of it being a role can be more direct and engaging
Maxine Walden: yes
Pema Pera: the very fact that we know that a movie is a movie means that we can totally enjoy the emotional aspects, all of them, great ups and terrible dawns, without closing our eyes and running away . . When we are extremely busy we can somehow fall into that kind of mode of watching our own life like a movie
Maxine Walden: and not fearing that anything catastrophic will happen, because it is after all a role/movie. But also an experience with genuine engagement
Pema Pera: how about phrasing that slightly differently, perhaps what you meant: catastrophic things WILL happen . . but they don’t have to be as devastating as we normally think they are