Expanded Awareness in the Now

I begin with a poem, written to recapture the few moments that I spent in a park with a little girl almost thirty years ago, written to recapture the depth of feeling engendered in me by the experience and to evoke the otherwordly feel of the whole encounter.

Bobby in the Park

I met a little girl named Bobby

In the park just now.

We were playing on the ropes

Jungle-gym.

We were talking in the park with our gloves on

And the sea-blue ropes.

She told me the story of a woman

Who put her baby in the laundry basket and then

Put the laundry in the machine, and her baby

By mistake.

And the baby was going ‘round and ‘round.

And the mother couldn’t find her baby and then she

Saw her baby going ‘round and ‘round.

And I said that it sounded like a nightmare and

The little girl said that she had that dream, and then

She told me that her mother was going to have

Another baby.

The power of this encounter, for me, was in the wholeness of being and the totality of truth that the little girl named Bobby shared with me in those few moments. We were both fully present in the Now. The air was cold. It was December in Vancouver, Canada. The days were very short and it was probably early afternoon when I went into the park to spend a little time there before heading back inside.

I remember who I was then, what I was. I was desperately struggling with a depression that threatened to bury me, so powerful was it. I was an unemployed teacher with no prospects, this being the early 1980's and all of North America in the grips of a challenging recession. I had very little money and lived with an alcoholic who happened to be one of those 'mean drunks' that we all have heard about, or even known. I remember counting on lots of exercise and fresh air to keep me from going down too deep. I used to walk for hours through the city streets, until reaching the beautiful beaches looking out onto English Bay and the mountains beyond. Then I would haul my weary self back, block after dark grey block, and sleep in my bare little room.

It was close to the beach that I found this little park and the young girl in the park, playing all by herself on the jungle-gym. Her nannie was sitting on a bench nearby, keeping a watchful eye on the two of us.

So she and I shared a moment together, and as children do, she confided in me, sensing my profound respect for all children perhaps, knowing that she could trust me. And she came to that park with her own life story, short as it was. Her mother was going to have another baby and this little girl, probably about 4 years old, didn't like that one little bit. Yet she couldn't say so directly. So she created this wonderfully horrible scenario for the newborn, may have heard the story somewhere, or may actually have dreamed it. Being told that your little brother or sister is in Mummy's tummy can be pretty unsettling.

So, on the surface of the moment, the totality of the Now seemed to be the cold blue sky and the distant mountains, the sound of the wind through nearby pines and the child and I tentatively reaching out for some sort of contact with each other - I in my loneliness and she in her unsettled state. There were the ropes and our cold hands, in gloves, hanging onto them. There was the gentle pull of muscles and the child's sweet young voice and my careful responses, for I would never knowingly hurt a child, even by my words, expression or feeling when in their presence. Yet the moment contained much more than that. And when the little girl told me that her mother was going to have another baby, it all became much clearer to me. Suddenly I experienced an expanded awareness in the Now that included the child's feelings about her mother and her anxiety about suddenly not being the only child. The moment included the child's 'back story' to use a screen writers' terminology.

The truth is that all of our moments include our back stories. And the present moment for those whom we encounter includes their back stories also. We are the totality of ourselves and our being in the Now. So, being in the Now is not only what surrounds us within our range of vision, of hearing, of feeling from within and from without. It includes our situation, our yearning, our sense of fulfillment, our relationships with others, our relationship with God, our financial well-being, our digestion or lack thereof.... It includes All That we Are in that moment. It includes everything that is happening in our lives and all that we hope and all that we fear and all that we love. Everything IS in the Now.

Expanded awareness in the Now is, to me, a sacred thing. It is a witnessing of the All-That-Is in the present. We bring our awareness of it into our being and present that awareness to All-That-Is as a gift of perception, of consciousness, of knowing and experiencing. We witness.*

I have, in the past, thought of the Now as a relatively small thing.... Just this moment. Just this place, this time. But we bring the totality of all that we are to every moment. And we are inextricably connected to All-That-Is and to the complexities and multiple layers of each person whom we know. So, I no longer think of the Now as small in any way. It is actually vast, limitless and sacred, comprised of countless truths and facets of being. It is perfect, and perfectly incomprehensible through the mind. Feeling is our response to the totality of the Now. Feeling, and a sort of knowing from the heart, allow us to experience expanded awareness in the Now.


* The first use of the word 'witness' given by my Oxford Concise is referenced in the year 1482 and gives it the meaning of knowledge, understanding, or wisdom. Interesting, is it not?