It’s hard to explain a non-conceptual experience of being in conceptual terms. I’ve heard this from various sources for several years, and I realize I’ve been hearing it all my life in some form, but not quite comprehending it until the past few months.

I mentioned to a friend the other night that my practice recently has been ‘observing my thoughts.’ She asked for clarification, and I found it difficult to explain. Today, I continued my practice of the skill of relaxation, and observed the experience of simply being, unentwined with thought or expectation for most of the day. Time both slowed and quickened. I’m grateful for a flexible perspective.

It’s sheer happenstance that this existence seems to me the way it does. From what I understand, there’s a better chance that there is an infinite number of me’s living different lives in parallel universes than that there is just this one me in this singular life. It’s a comfort to settle into this possibility: anything I can think of to desire or to do I can rest assured is happening somewhere else at the same time as I’m lying reading on the patio chaise, strafed by hummingbirds, still, quiet, present, quite aware of this moment, here.