Bending time
Stuart Wilde
Your position in time is controllable and fluid. Not only can you bend your perception of time (how long things take), but you can control the speed at which those things come at you. For a year I worked in an Italian restaurant as a helper in the kitchen. We had two chefs. The regular chef worked five nights a week, the other, the remaining two nights. The regular guy was a model of order and discipline, and when he worked, customers arrived at a steady pace and meals were delivered promptly. The other chef was a basket case. He was always screaming and shouting; things flew in all directions, and I was constantly picking spaghetti off the ceiling. I noticed that when he worked, the customers arrived in bunches. It would be deathly quiet, and then suddenly 30 orders would come down the hatch all at once. The kitchen went into an Italian version of a Chinese fire drill. It was not a pretty sight. The contrast between the two chefs made me realize that the disciplined, ordered guy was in fact somehow controlling the flow of customers, whereas his replacement did not.
I’ve experienced this in my own life — to such a startling degree that I wrote about it in my book (ah yes, that book). In my case I’ve been both chefs. You probably have too, depending upon the area in question.
Places are like this. I’ve long thought of New York City as the Great Amplifier. After only a short time there I saw people become themselves, though extremely so. Personality characteristics evolve quickly there. If you are focused, the results are magnificent, the options pour forth like a waterfall delivering goody after goody for your possibility inspection. If you arrive in New York City in a disordered state of mind, things rapidly become chaotic. If chaotic when you light upon the City, you might die there, or nearly so. New York City seems to amplify whatever you bring to it. An electric, human-hive buzz vibe is in the air there.
And there are places that pacify the soul. Many of the great retreats of the world are found in such locales. These are places you go to slough off discordant energies . . . .
The Wilde way
What Stuart Wilde is speaking to above is your ability to bring flow to your life, if you want it. I have areas in my own life where I flow like the hair of a goddess — love, family, friendship, laughter. I also have an area tangled like Medusa’s viper-y locks that I don’t want to give more solidity to here by going into details (yet . . . once it’s resolved I’ll blab plenty).
What Wilde noted is that the environment reflected the calm, centered man of order — as it did the manic one.
In the previous post Dorrie’s conscious awareness was a healing balm. This is as true for grief as it is for Medusa’s in-fighting snakes.
In the writing of this post — really just in the last paragraph — these examples have convinced me to spend contemplation time with my attention fully — lovingly — on the Medusa-head zone . . . there’s nothing that awareness and contemplation can’t soften . . . .
So, yes, this article started out about bending time, yet has turned into a call to to be conscious. Right where Stuart Wilde was artfully leading us.
Related posts