Waves of time
I am a nostalgic man … Even though I consider myself to be quite the opposite.
I tend to move on in life quite quickly and I am always open to what the future has to bring.
I am already in love with what is to come.
But at times, I stop, and pause. I breathe, I feel and I take a moment to love again what has come before. To love again each and everyone I came across, each moment shared.
Some have already ended their journey on earth, some will eventually make their way as well, and others whom I will encounter have not yet been born. I, in between times, have always been torn between the time that’s gone, and the time we are moving towards. The past … and the future.
I have always looked for a way to make time stop, and I am not sure whether it was to immortalize the moment or in fear of what is to come.
When I was a child, I used to cry some nights, feeling the dreadful wrath of time that will eventually hold my life in its grasp.
I was afraid that the love we share, the bonds that unite us, will eventually dissipate as time goes by. That all things created goes away, vanishing in an ocean of forgotten memories. I was afraid that love would go away … like a sandglass, slowly letting time fall out of its hold…
Souls emerging in our lives that we’ve known since eternity, reincarnating in different roles, lovers reuniting, enemies to forgive, parent becomes child, child becomes parent, races, gender, bodies, pleasure, suffering, what was once eventually disappears. Scenarios unfolding in the cosmic play of time in which we incarnate, recognizing among so many, the gaze of those I’ve known before.
I am not attached to the past, in an instant I can let go of everything and move in a new direction. Yet I tend to wait as long as I can before doing so. I have a special relationship with memories, memories of what was felt. I hold onto them like a child finding seashells on the beach. I collect them in a space of my heart and once in a while I sit, open this pocket and like a melody coming out of my heart, it reveals the presence of those I loved, the one I love and those I will come to love with time. You are all there, in this secret pocket of mine.
Memories, moments, loved ones, faces, tastes, scents, music, the power of the human experience … I have sworn to God I would never waste my time doing something I don’t love to do. I will live for what my heart wants to live.
It’s not a coincidence why I ended up where I am. I work with memories in all forms and ways.
Photography has all to do with immortalizing a powerful moment into something that will defy time. Like a recollection of what my body has felt into a visual sculpture of time.
Astrology, another of my passions, has all to do with the passage of time experienced through various cycles. Imprints held in shape, and dissolved by planetary dynamics.
Meditation and healing, allowing past memories to surface, making peace through acceptance of what has occurred, with awareness – something that is available to us only in the present moment. Freeing memories we carry inside ourselves holding back our further growth. The suffering of others reminds me of mine, so as of the collective, perhaps why I feel so called to use my hands and reach out.
It is forbidden to bring with us any belongings when we will die, even this precious body of ours. Will these memories stored within my heart make it with me or will they vanish in the abyss of time? Will I remember when I come to meet you again? The invisible world holds such mystery, I feel the connection that unites us, yet we appear separate. I feel the streams of communion between us, yet words and mind appear to not hear it.
When the time our journey together comes to an end, I hold back a little bit, I postpone. I know it must come, but I want to feel the gift of your departure as much as I felt the gift of our first contact. The first and last spoons of your favorite dessert are uniquely savored. I retreat and open this secret door where I collect memories, take each shell within my hands, giving it back to the ocean, knowing I may find you again in some different times.
Birth, a process celebrated from pregnancy to many years after the being came into existence. All the delicate steps to preserve this new life make each moment precious. Birth may feel more expansive, since all the memories we will have with that being are expected to come in the future while the past is non-existent. Death is quite the opposite. We know there will be nothing further ahead shared with that being. The future seems empty and non-existent, while the past feels full of memories. Knowing time has come to the end isn’t the same as knowing time holds full potential.
This emerging and departure are transitions we experience within ourselves. We incarnate through birth and depart this plane of existence alone with oneself, yet we can’t live on earth without others. Everyone must go through these two initiations on our own, yet witnessed by others.
There is a time when everything comes to an end.
There is a time to throw that seashell back in the sea …
Nostalgia isn’t related to the past as much as it is to the future. It has more to do with the process of death, letting go, which is symbolic of transitions. To me, it is a healthy part of the transition from death to birth. Just the same as we cherish the beginning of something, holding dear to our heart the vision of what will come, even though it isn’t here yet.
Time has taken a complete different meaning for me. We may perceive the present as a manifestation of past causes, and the future as a consequence of the present, therefore perceiving time as a linear one directional process. What if the future contributes in the making of the present just as much as the past?
When something manifests in our life, like a meal on our table, it’s manifestation depends on both the actions we took (past) to make the meal and the desire to eat (future) that contributed in manifesting the present. Technology allows us to create a plane, yet technology itself will not create a plane without the desire and the vision to eventually fly. Manifestation occurs just between the material causes and the final vision of the form it will take, the intention. In which case, where we come from and where we are going co-create the present moment.
Is the primary cause of human existence found in a chain reaction of causes and effect from a distant past, or could we find half of the causality in the future that would retroactively act on life in order to bring evolution to a pre-established intention?
Then the present would feel like surrendering to the waves of time like a drop of water within a river’s stream, carried effortlessly through a cycle of condensation and rain, nurturing a balanced ecosystem. What if time works just the same way?
We may perceive time linearly, just like we perceive a plane flying in one direction in a straight line, yet if pursued around the globe, this linear trajectory ends up being a circle back to the same place.
“Each straight line is just a little part of a circle”
Time is imposed on our consciousness by the polarity nature of our mind that forces us to separate time by a “before” and “after”. Time is a phenomenon of consciousness that we project outside ourselves, we then believe it exists independently from us, linear and heading in one direction. Obscured by this illusion, we don’t see that everything is a meeting of one thing coming from the past and another from the future, infinite crossings of streams going in all directions.
“Understand this secret and learn to differentiate opposites streams that crosses in the rainbow of the present”
It takes time for humans to find their wholeness, even if wholeness has always been there and is innate within the self. This is the irony of time, that it takes time to comprehend it doesn’t exist. Just like reading a book, the story is already there, yet it takes some time to discover it.
Surrender to the waves of time … Our lives are unfolding just as they are supposed to be.
With Love,
Jean-Manuel Nadeau