A Parable
During the winter Bev had always had a tough time of things. It rained almost non-stop from October until March. She found it very gloomy and being holed up in her apartment was what she was most prone to do. She lived in a beautiful city, Vancouver, yet for that season it seemed impossible for her to see the true nature of the city. She had been living on her own for about six years, she had moved from a small town where she lived with her parents and her younger brother, Jason. She missed them greatly, yet she always seemed to put off calling or writing. She had a couple of girlfriends she had seldom stayed in touch with since university,
Things had seemed much brighter for her when she moved from home to the city those six years past. She was excited to have a new life and become an accomplished fashion designer. The possibilities seemed endless and she had become anxious to embrace a enormous adventure. She did quite well at school at first. A few years in she had been swept in to the college social scene and had begun to party a bit too much, and finally had her heart and expectations broken by a bright, young, and handsome theatre student. Bev was being convinced by her unhappy outcomes that she was not going to see much success in her life. She ended up dropping out of school a couple of terms before she was completed. She got a job selling clothes from a retail store in a downtown mall. She kept mostly to herself.
During that rainy winter she went to work and went home straight after. She spent much of her time at work isolated from her workmates. She had started to think that some of them were conspiring against her and that she was somehow not really worthy of being there to begin with. She would spend time folding sweaters having imaginary debates with her boss. She would spend almost all of her time in a created reality that was never really there. The others actually quite liked Bev, they found her quiet and shy and endearing. She seemed to them a little hurt or wounded, but very sweet none the less. She was aching to be something more than she was experiencing. She often dreamed of what her life might be like if she had a good man to love her. An average guy, maybe who made a good living, who treated her reasonably seemed like it might make her life make more sense. She also thought it would be nice to be discovered as a great fashion talent and to realize fame and fortune. She would be happy and whole then, she often thought.
During that winter she spent more and more time living in her mind, projecting in to an imagined future. At times she would find warm happy feelings for short periods of time, those feelings were short lived when she inevitable realized that she was not living her fictional life. She was convinced that she would feel purposeful when she arrived at the picture of her ideal life she had created in her mind. Bev paid a lot of attention to what she didn’t have and how that was the result of her pain. She daydreamed constantly.
One evening Bev was walking from her workplace downtown to the Sky-train station, to head home. She felt a tug on her sleeve. “Excuse me young lady, can you help me across the street?” a gentle looking very tiny old lady asked.
Bev temporarily snapped out of her preoccupied frame of mind, “Umm, ok. Here.” She reached out her arm so the little lady could take her arm.
As Bev assisted her slowly across the street, the old lady looked up sweetly and asked her, “Will you please help me into that little restaurant just over there?” Bev was secretly a little annoyed. She was already daydreaming of planting herself firmly in front of her television, where she could tune out… escape her pain. She was dreading every second she was in and unable to divert her own attention.
As the old lady took her seat in the restaurant assisted by Bev, she looked up and back straight into her eyes, “Sit down dear, you have lots of time. Join me for a nice dinner. Its my treat.”
“Well I don’t really have time. I , uhhh, would like to, but I have…” Bev stammered a bit puzzled by this lady’s odd way. She seemed to know something Bev didn’t.
“You have an eternity, dear,” cutting Bev off in mid sentence. “ You just don’t see it that way. It should be me, a ninety-seven year old woman who should be worried about time. Come on, sweetie, indulge an old woman. I guarantee that you wont be disappointed. If you like I will pay you the equivalent of what your job pays you for your time.”
“Well, I don’t know. Well ok, maybe for a little while,” Bev surrendered a little.
They sat together for a long time in that fancy little Italian restaurant. They ate and chatted like they were old friends, or like a grandmother and granddaughter. Time flew, and Bev laughed like she hadn’t in some many years. The old lady was very delighted in the company she had chosen. The waiters and the neighbouring diners were infected by the odd couple’s bliss and joy.
Bev rose some four hours or so after they began their visit, and excused herself to the restroom. The old lady stopped her briefly. “Dear, what is your last name?”
“It’s Benning, I’ll be right back,” Bev replied.
As Bev left the lady pulled an notebook and a envelope from her hand bag. She wrote a short note and placed two crisp one-hundred dollar bills in the fold of the note. She hurriedly stuffed them both into the envelope and laid it across the table in front of Bev’s seat on the table. When Bev returned she saw the envelope and started to protest, “I know you offered to pay me to have dinner with you, but really it is not necessary. I cannot accept it. The dinner and the company has been fantastic, I cannot remember when I have had such a nice time.”
“Dear, please accept this. I don’t have anyone to spoil or leave anything to, so I am so happy to give you a little something. May I ask your birthday?” the old lady put her pen to her little notebook. “I have a little hobby of sending birthday cards to my friends. It makes an old lady happy to send out a few cards from time to time. What is your address?”
Bev obliged the her new friend and thought to herself about how sweet this lady had been. She gathered her things and got ready to leave. “Do you need help home?”
“No that’s fine, dear. I have someone coming to pick me up in a bit, you run along. Thanks so much for the company. God bless you dear.”
Bev turned as she walked out the door to wave at the lady who had taken her so much by surprise. She smiled a true, sincerely joyous smile. She noticed too, when she got outside the rain had disappeared, it was like a warm spring evening out.
Bev opened the envelope a half a block away. She couldn’t wait to see what was inside. She saw the money right away. She was delighted at first, until she noticed the note. It said, “Dear Bev, Thanks for the delightful company. I am enclosing two one-hundred dollar bills. Please give one each to the first two people you think could use it the most. You will feel great when you do. Then tomorrow at 3:30 pm please call Allan at 604-555-2198...he has something for you. I hope you like it. I am pretty sure you will. Lots of love, Bernadette.” She was a little mystified, but willing to see what this was all about. She right away handed one of the hundreds to a homeless guy pushing a cart full of his strange worldly possessions. He was a little aghast, pleasantly though. Bev darted off before he could say anything. She looked intently to find the next recipient, as she was nervous if she didn’t give it right away, she might keep it. She found a girl much like herself in age and appearance, staring in the window of a shoe store at a nice pair of black boots. She stuffed the bill in her hand and ran away.
“What a blast!” she thought. "I could get used to this."
Bev slept in the next day, as she was prone to do on her day off. She woke up around noon. She made herself some coffee, folded up her bed back into the couch in her little studio apartment. She flipped on the TV for some company and some noise. She had completely forgotten, so far, about her odd encounter with Bernadette the night before. At about three she remembered she was supposed to call Allan at three thirty. She became intently curious. The next half hour seemed to be an eternity. She called at exactly three thirty. “Hi, is Allan there?” she meekly asked. “A lady named Bernadette asked me to call him today at this time.”
“Ah… Hello Bev. Is this Bev Benning?” the male voice asked.
“Yes, yes it is. Do you know why she asked me to call you?”
“I do, Bernadette asked me to come to her house at about seven pm last night. You see I am her attorney. She asked me to rearrange her will last night and make you sole heir to her estate. She had no children. She said you were the person best suited in her group of friends to receive it. She has left you seven and half million in liquid assets, a very nice home in the British Properties and a very nice Italian restaurant. I guess old Bernadette knew she was close, she passed this morning, in her sleep, at about three… three-thirty am. I am sorry for your loss, but can you come to my office tomorrow to start the paper work?”
A Teaching
If you eliminate living in your past and stop projecting your false self into the future, will there be anything to do? If you stop plotting an imagined contrived fiction of a future reality, what will you think about? What will your life be for? If you don’t carry the story of your past, what are you made of? Where do you come from? You come from the source, the Oneness. When you abandon the past and the future you can be here now. To some that is against everything they believe in and all that they have been trained to do. It seems insane to let go like that. It is the True sanity. To live in the purest present moment is to be available for your real life. There you can really hear your fellows, smell the forest, and pay clear attention to that sacred place. It is the only real time. Now.
See how when your anticipated future is threatened by another human aspect (your wife, child, or co-worker), when that person acts outside of the invisible demand you have placed on them to help you enact how you want your “movie” to go. When your son tells you, “I don’t want to play hockey.” If you had a whole professional hockey career planned out for him, and you were attached to that playing out in the future, you might react very strongly. You may become quite resentful or miserable. You actually have thousands of such thoughts everyday. Constantly measuring the success of your false self. It is constant mind noise. Every time you look at another human aspect, you assess, threat or asset. Your ego works to fit them into your story. It can be so rapid, so subliminal, so erratic that you cannot even recognise it. Suffering emanates from this constant chaotic ramble of thought.
When driving down the road you may drive past someone who reminds you of a relative who you have an unresolved resentment or sadness around them. That can launch you into a whole internal re-enactment of that experience. The internal re-enactment…the “play-back of your life movie” is not real. It is your imagination. You do, however, feel as though it is real; your actions are connected to a fiction based on memory. That memory is fluid and subject to change, re-writing (for the convenience of your ego). You can then can then carry the mind pattern and emotions that are reacting to the fiction, and use them with the people or situations of your present. You could transpose this revived anxiety onto another driver or pedestrian. Someone may do something very innocent and or have nothing to do with you, and you can take that pain or anger and misinterpret actions or words. Instant road-rage. I am sure that most people who act out against others are caught in their internal turmoil and drag others into their out of sync, imagined fiction.
So what is in the present, if not your history or your imagined potential? Everything! First of all freedom, and the bliss that is a result of that. The opportunity to recognise Truth. To hear and see God in all that is around you in your present moment. A reality that is open enough to allow you to truly experience the beauty in your relationships. The true connection to you friend or child. A holistic support of those that are in pain or suffering. A peace that allows you to truly not need, not demand, or have expectation of anything. True peace. When you have none of these, you automatically act in compassion. Your true nature can be expressed only in the present. It is the only place to be. It is Oneness. If you are not in the now, you may miss your whole real life. This is the only real tragedy.
The Power of Now , a blessed book by Eckhart Tolle is an excellent expression of enlightened living. I wholeheartedly recommend it, as well as Ram Dass’ Here Now . I owe a great deal to the these teachers, these fellows, brothers who helped me find the Truth within me. I am grateful for their shared words and ideas, I acknowledge that they are holy men, wholly men (ha); that they dwell within me, the Oneness and I in them.
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