Mudra of Time and Timelessness
The simple mudra of lightly touching the tip of the first finger to the tip of the thumb connects, brings together, time in timelessness and timelessness in time. This invaluable, easy gesture of the hand reminds us where we are in any given situation. It is a gesture that brings us to the precise and present moment of whatever circumstance we are in. In this shared instant of now, time and timelessness effortlessly balance one another.
If pulled apart or separated, time and timelessness lose coherence. Without time, timelessness floats with no meaningful ‘where’ in the vast and open oneness of singularity. And time, without its timeless companion, gets stuck, pinned, by its own overabundant focus on endless parcels and bits…fragments of occurrences, whether real or anticipated, of situations past, or present, or yet to come. In this way, time catches itself, ensnares itself, in the ‘thingness’ of events. With no abiding ‘whereness’ of time, we too become caught and cannot fully meet, cannot fully connect, with the moment of our situation. Without timelessness, there is no felt place in time in which to be.
And so, these two entities of timelessness and time provide a context, an unfolding frame, for each other; one holds both the other as well as itself. So too are we as ourselves, as your self and my self, simultaneously held in both time and timelessness. We can now know naturally and easily the ‘where’ of our situation, whatever it may be. In this way, we can meet a circumstance and take agency, for a place in time now has meaning. And at this triangulated point of self and time and timelessness, we can just be. Never lost to time, never lost in ‘no time’, this point moves like liquid light. It is the leading edge of light and is not different now from what it was several minutes ago, or from what it will be several minutes from now. It is compass and map and place all at once…pointing to now, now, now…a known time held always in the timeless present in the life of every situation.
The mudra…the index finger flexed and lightly pressing against the thumb, the thumb gently staying the finger…is method. We can now choose to be fully present in any given moment. The mudra gives us a way to do that: The beingness of our own being emerges and unfolds where time and timelessness simultaneously hold and release the moment of every circumstance. And we are here, living now from this place in the clarity of continuously flowing time.
Written by: Erin Johannesen, M.A., M.D.
Edited by: Rudolph Bauer, Ph.D.
