The first thing that I’d like to do

Is to save every day till eternity passes away

Just to spend them with you.                                    

            Jim Croce

The implications of a oneness perspective are similar in the time dimension to what they are in the spatial dimensions: Just as there is only here (existence), there is only now (now).

I’m guessing that most of us have had a felt experience of the truth of timelessness that arose due to some cause: Meditation, hard physical exercise, sexual ecstasy, deep joy at the birth of a child, deep grief at the loss of a loved one, near death experiences, or simply states of flow associated with being fully engaged in an activity – all of these can cause us to “fall out of time.”

From another perspective, however, you could also call these timeless moments falling into consciousness. More precisely, I really mean falling into the direct experience of yourself as consciousness, since most people are nominally or grudgingly aware that they’re conscious whenever they’re not asleep.

But knowing in a more-or-less check-the-box fashion that you’re conscious, in contrast to being unconscious, obviously isn’t going to connect you with a deep sense of natural peace or the uncaused joy of being. By the same token, though, neither is seeking states of ecstasy that are unsustainable. Grounded happiness means just that: neither checked-out emotionally, nor high on whatever gets you high and, therefore, can fail to come through at a later time.  

Waiting for you here in the now is uncaused joy: a baseline of happiness that doesn’t arise as the result circumstances and, therefore, can’t be reversed by a change in them. This is the true meaning of life, the word life. Not the conventional meaning of the word, with its beginning, myriad of changes along the way, followed by its inevitable ending.

Life is eternal. As such, you can reclaim it many, many times in what you call your one lifetime. And each time you do, you realize, there it was all along. Right here in this room, patiently waiting for you to notice it.