In Time & Space

When you arrive upon a scene, you bring with you all your past experience. The past either collides or merges into the present—and the present moment is the eye of God.

The phrase of set and setting has been around for some time, used often in psychological circles and loosley within the drug culture to explain why a “trip” can be positive or not.

Set represents the expectations people bring with them. Setting is the environment that a person is in. The combination of these two elements is the synergy of our lives. You can apply this model to all experience.

I have amended the phrase to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Seti) and Setting. While the prospect of sentient life from other worlds is fascinating, the aliens are already among us—stop! Take notice at the levels of awareness around you and prove it to your own self.

Who has not seen an apparition of some kind?

Did you shrug it off as not possible? Or was there something there that reached out to you?

Only you know if you said hello or dismissed the messenger without hearing a word.

The deep jungle is lush and dense. You have to carve your way through the thicket.

Then, suddenly, a vision beyond words reveals itself. Who were they? What happened to them? The jungle had reclaimed its due.

Was this another Machu Picchu—the Lost City of the Incas? You move on toward what? Treasures? Knowledge?

The jungle is oddly quiet. But there is a sound. Your heart pounds and pounds. There is movement up ahead.

This is the moment.

Cherry blossoms infuse the city with magic and the beauty of new beginnings.

The capital of Japan and center of traditional Japanese culture and Buddhism for more than 1,000 years (from 794 to 1868), Kyoto (literally, “Capital City”) has been called a variety of names through the centuries, including Heian-kyo, or the “Capital of Peace and Tranquility.”

To let go, he told her, is the way. Let go of judgments. Don’t carry the weight of bad karma on your back. Release all negative thoughts. Let them wander in and through you. Do not struggle. Let the thoughts leave your essence. With no resistance, they will not stay.

It sounded right to her. She would do it. She would let the monsters go, no matter what.

After some time, she found her self floating in a realm without hostility, a place not of this world. She had entered the zone, the gap, where transendent thoughts manifest into material reality. She felt beautiful.

She would tell him what had happened. She would do so when she would see him again.

For now, she remained detached and loving it.

In the Ashram there were men and women who were seeking ultimate knowledge, which is the connection with the Great Creator.

Of course, they had to give to get and that meant having a willingness to give up what were once the most important things, such as materialistic thinking and irrelevant distractions to the goal of the heart.

What a wonderful desire.

You could always tell when the day was beginning on the island.

In the early morning, the women and children would walk down to the pristine river where they would fill the jars with fresh water, then bathe as the children played on the banks of the river.

I would watch this daily routine each morning during my year long visit on the island.

The beautiful scene is indelibly etched into my mind forever.

When my fellow explorers and I entered the hidden cave, it was immediately evident that we had stumbled upon a rare find. The cave was hallowed ground that had lain undisturbed for eons.

How long? Perhaps more than 25,000 years said my paleontologist friend who was an expert in dating such finds.

“Look at the art,” I said. “These ancient artists did not go to art school to learn how to draw their magnificent works.”

We all stood in awe. The etchings on the cave walls were art from the soul of early man.

Ishmael tells of his journey aboard the doomed ship, the Peqoud, in Herman Melville’s grand novel, Moby Dick.

Ishmael is the only man aboard the Peqoud to survive in the novel.

Queequeg is the friendly cannibal Ishmael first meets at New Bedford; they become fast and good friends, despite Queequeg’s less than Christian background. He becomes one of the three harpooners of the Peqoud.

Ahab is the captain of the Peqoud. His leg was taken in whaling accident by Moby Dick. He has become obsessed with hunting down the whale and killing it. But why call it an accident? Was it not Ahab who searched out the whale to kill it in the first place?

Starbuck is the Chief Mate of the Peqoud. He’s a decent, honorable man who is not taken in with Ahab’s quest, and is continually trying to get the old man to turn home.

First published in London in October of 1851, then followed by a publication in America a month later, Moby Dick had not been a success. Critics harpooned the novel for its “experimental” style, as it swung between metaphor to comedy to science; readers did not flock to buy it.

Today, Moby Dick is considered a classic of American literature.