WHIDBEY ISLAND DREAMS

http://westcoastbrit.blogspot.com/2012/08/whidbey-island.html

"Obsession by potentiality."

BUSTED! I've been almost drunk on 'potential', on the verge of losing myself in fantasies of 'what might be' for a month now. My island getaway on Whidbey Island is just a week away and I don't want to ruin it by riding the runaway horse of Imagination. Today I saw an astrology column that said this:
 

There's such a strong sense of potential in the air, 

it's a bit difficult to stay on track 

with current reality. 

The mind and heart continue 

to want to live in the possibilities that lie ahead." 

Pam Youngans
www.northpointastrology.com

But how can you not be excited? Or not have images flash through your mind? I have dreamed of going here for years. My aunt is in an Extended Living center in Seattle. I'm going to visit her, while having this getaway as my homebase. Why not? Sometimes I wonder if the 'real vacation' is this time I've spent longing and imagining it all. I have done so many things and gone to so many places. I have inhabited my downstairs unit and it wasn't even raining in my fantasies (although it probably will be during the time of my actual visit!!!).

We've all had the anti-climatic experience of building something up so much that it's a huge let down when the real thing arrives.

But I'm good with whatever it might be. This whole adventure (going off by myself, to 'places unknown' and discovering whatever I discover) IS THE TRIP. So it's not about what I find when I arrive--as if THAT might bestow happiness. It's marveling at the moment-by-moment wonder AS Deep Presence saturates every instant of the journey itself. 

By being each moment (something I'm learning to do in life anyway) there's no horizon ahead and no wake behind. It's all just 'this wave cresting'. And what an amazing moment each one of them IS, from such a vantage point!

I am keenly aware that this 'problem' doesn't actually exist, anyway, since there can be no 'future that might be ruined, nor any 'dreams come true' that might unfold. There is only and always this one single, infinite and irreplaceable moment. And IT carries no charge whatsoever--to the extent that we fully experience it (fully ARE it). 

Fully showing up for this 'one & only' moment means being so totally IN and OF it--that any evaluation or measurement, any proclamation of worth, can only occur before/after the actual instant. Because the actual instant is uniquely, simply, & exclusively WHATEVER IT IS. 

Being such Deep Presence, eclipses the tendency to 'lose our self' into identification with whatever's going on. This does not imply a self-immersed stance that becomes polarized, nor distanced, in any way. It's just the opposite. We become THE FLOW itself, rather than somebody who is focused upon 'the particulars' or 'the predicament'.

Trusting this--because it's what I find to be true throughout the moments of each day--eliminates concern, anxiety, and energy spent falling into the temptation of fantasy OR reverie, whenever it offers its allure of promised reward.